"A centre of excellence in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information and cultural heritage communities."

UKOLN is based at the University of Bath.

This page provides links to all current and past projects and activities with a UKOLN involvement.

Current activities

• Ariadne: Library and Information Science magazine
• Cerify: UKOLN collaborates with Trinity College Dublin on this project aiming to increase engagement of the United Kingdom's HE and commercial sectors with the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) and Current Research Information Systems (CRISs). It will evaluate, test, and demonstrate CERIF with four pilot UK HE institutions and one international commercial organisation (Thomson Reuters).
• DC-assist: a metadata help utility.
• DC-dot: a Dublin Core generator.
• DCMI Affiliate (UK): as part of JISC's DCMI membership, UKOLN acts as managing agent to plan and coordinate UK DCMI activity jointly with JISC.
• D-Lib Magazine: UKOLN mirror of this LIS journal.
• Developer Community Supporting Innovation Project (DevCSI): a JISC-funded project, based at UKOLN, about helping developers in HE to realise their full potential, by creating the conditions for them to be able to learn, to network effectively, to share ideas and to collaborate, creating a 'community' of HE developers which is greater than the sum of its parts.
• The Digital Curation Centre (DCC): the UK’s leading centre of expertise in digital data curation.
• FixRep: Enabling metadata triage: project aimed at examining existing techniques and implementations for automated formal metadata extraction, within the framework of existing toolsets and services provided by the JISC Information Environment and elsewhere.
• I2S2/KRDS: project aiming to test, review, and promote combined use of the Keeping Research Data Safe (KRDS) Benefits Taxonomy and the I2S2 Value Chain Analysis tools for assessing the benefits of digital preservation of research data. UKOLN collaborates with project partners CHIME (Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional Education), UK Data Archive, Archaeology Data Service, OCLC Research, and Charles Beagrie Ltd.
• The International Journal of Digital Curation (IJDC): an electronic journal entirely devoted to papers, articles and news items on the curation of digital objects and related issues. It features cutting-edge articles by key figures in the field, as well as reflecting the current mood within the digital curation community.
• IMPACT: a European project aimed at speeding up the process and enhancing the quality of mass digitisation in Europe.
• The Infrastructure for Integration in Structural Sciences (I2S2) Project: funded under the JISC's Data Management Infrastructure Programme.
• JISC Beginner's Guide to Digital Preservation: a project to create a straightforward and pragmatic guide to digital preservation for those working on JISC projects.
• JISC Information Environment Architecture: supporting the development of the JISC Information Environment.
• JISC Information Environment Demonstrator: surfacing the Information Environment.
• Linked Open Copac Archives Hub (LOCAH): Mimas and UKOLN collaborating on a JISC-funded project to make Archives Hub and Copac data available as structured Linked Data, for the benefit of education and research. Other partners working on the project are Eduserv, Talis and OCLC.
• Metadata Forum: the Metadata Forum is run by UKOLN and funded by JISC. The Forum aims to build a community around metadata, for all practitioners who use metadata in their work, at whatever level of knowledge.
• Patients Participate!: UKOLN collaborates with the Digital Curation Centre, British Library, Association of Medical Research Charities, and Sage Bionetworks on this project investigating the potential of crowd-sourced "lay summaries", derived from UK PubMed Central content, to enable the citizen-patient to better understand research.
• PEG-BOARD: Palæoclimate & Environment data Generation – Building Open Access to Research Data: funded under the JISC's Data Management Infrastructure Programme.
• REDm-MED: a collaboration between the University of Bath's Innovative Design and Manufacturing Research Centre (IdMRC) and UKOLN, to set up a research data management regime for the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
• RepUK: an aggregation of UK Open Access Institutional Repository metadata.
• Research360: An institutional project designed to pilot policies, infrastructure and training resources to provide high-quality support for research.
• RSS-xpress: create, update and register RSS channels.
• Research Information Management (RIM): UKOLN is providing programme support for the JISC RIM activity.
• SageCite: citing network models of disease and associated data.
• Smart Research Framework (SRF): creating a Cloud-based electronic laboratory notebook system from LabTrove, Blog3 and LabBroker software.
• SWORD: Simple Web service Offering Repository Deposit.
• UKOLN Metadata pages: a synthesis of current and past metadata activities at UKOLN.
• UK Web Focus: is a national Web co-ordinator post.

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Past activities

• Agent Cities: deploying a schema registry as an ontology server for the Agentcities.NET Network.
• Agora: an eLib phase 3 hybrid library project.
• Application Profiles Support project: funded by JISC and aims to support the Dublin Core Application Profiles (DCAPs)
• ARCO: Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects.
• ART Corpus: the ART Corpus was developed by Aberystwyth within the JISC-funded ART project and consists of 225 manually annotated papers.
• BIBLINK: linking Publishers and National Bibliographic Services.
• Bibliographic management: informational Web pages
• BNB Currency Survey: monitored the availability of bibliographic records created for the British National Bibliography.
• Cedars: Consortium of University Research Libraries Exemplars in Digital ARchiveS.
• CIRCE: resource organisation and discovery in subject-based services.
• Collection Description Focus: ensuring consistency and compatibility of collection description methods, schemas and tools across projects, disciplines, institutions and sectors.
• CORES: a forum on shared metadata vocabularies.
• CRIS-OAR: Knowledge Exchange Project: to increase interoperability between CRIS (Current Research Information Systems) and OAR (Open Access Repositories).
• Cultivate Interactive: a pan-European Web magazine for the digital heritage and cultural content communities within the EU's Fifth Framework Programme.
• DCC Scarp Project: set up to discover much more about disciplinary approaches by substantial case studies based on an immersive approach.
• Defining Image Access: requirements for interoperable discovery and delivery of image data.
• DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries: UKOLN was a partner in this major initiative funded by the EU FP6 Programme.
• DELOS Newsletter: UKOLN edited the Newsletter of the DELOS Network of Excellence, a major initiative funded by the EU FP6 Programme.
• DESIRE: Development of a European Service for Information on Research and Education.
• DESIRE Metadata Registry: a demonstrator metadata registry.
• DRIVER: an EC-funded project building a production quality testbed for a Europe-wide digital repository infrastructure.
• EASTER (Evaluating Automated Subject Tools for Enhancing Retrieval): to test and evaluate existing tools for automated subject metadata generation; to understand better what is possible and what the limitations of current solutions are; to make subsequent recommendations for services employing subject metadata in the JISC community.
• eBank UK: supporting the scholarly knowledge cycle by describing and linking research data, provenance and scholarly publications.
• eCrystals Federation Project: the project was led by the UK National Crystallography Service (University of Southampton) with core partners at UKOLN (University of Bath), the Digital Curation Centre (Universities of Bath & Edinburgh) and the Unilever Centre (University of Cambridge).
• eLib: informational Web pages for the Electronic Libraries Programme.
• Enhanced tagging (EnTag): a UKOLN-led project, investigating the combination and comparison of controlled and folksonomy approaches to support resource discovery in repositories and digital collections.
• EnrichUK: the gateway to a lottery-funded collection of 150 sites supported by the New Opportunities Fund.
• ePrints UK: UKOLN was home to the ePrints UK Project Manager.
• ERIM: a collaboration between the Innovative design and Manufacturing Research Centre (IdMRC) and UKOLN, both at the University of Bath.
• Exploit Interactive: a European Library and Information Science magazine.
• Full Disclosure: a study for a national prgramme of retrospective catalogue conversion.
• Gate-Z: a Bath Profile compliant Z39.50 relay.
• Good APIs Project: a JISC-funded project aimed at providing the sector with information and advice on the factors that encourage use of machine interfaces, based on existing practice.
• GroupLog: assesing the feasibility of offering a collaborative group work tool as a portlet.
• HILT: High-Level Thesaurus.
• IMesh Toolkit: an architecture and toolkit for distributed subject gateways.
• Interoperability Focus: UKOLN's Interoperability Focus team is responsible for exploring, publicising and promoting the benefits and practice of effective interoperability across diverse information sectors.
• Intute Repository Search: showcasing the content of UK repositories by developing a search service.
• JISC Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry (IEMSR): a project to develop a pilot metadata schema registry for the JISC IE.
• JISC Information Environment Service Registry: a pilot project to investigate the requirements of a Service Registry for the Information Environment.
• KIM Grand Challenge Project: an EPSRC-funded project led by the University of Bath Mechanical Engineering Department with UKOLN involvement.
• JISC PowR: the project aim was to “organise workshops and produce a handbook that specifically addresses digital preservation issues that are relevant to the UK HE/FE web management community”. It was undertaken jointly by UKOLN and ULCC Digital Archives department.
• JISC SIS Landscape Study: this blog was set up to collect evidence for a small, JISC-funded study on how the UK academic sector is using Web 2.0 tools and services either in addition to, or instead of, JISC shared services.
• Katherine Sharp Review: UKOLN mirrored this LIS journal.
• MEG: an open forum for debating the description and provision of educational resources at all educational levels across the United Kingdom.
• MODELS: Moving to Distributed Environments for Library Services.
• Networked Services Policy Issue Papers: Briefing papers on networked services policy issues for public libraries.
• NewsAgent: Electronic news and current awareness for library and information staff.
• nof-digitise Technical Advisory Service : technical advisory support for stage two applicants to nof-digitise.
• Open Archives Forum: forum for European activity related to open archives and the Open Archive Initiative (OAI).
• People Flows: exploring why and when people use different types of libraries.
• PORTAL: Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences Locally.
• PRIDE: People and Resources Identification for Distributed Environments.
• Public Library People: Directory of UK public library staff, maintained until February 2007.
• QA Focus: funded by the JISC to support JISC's digital library programmes. QA Focus was provided by a partnership of UKOLN (University of Bath) and the AHDS.
• Resource Discovery Network: Access to high quality Internet resources for the UK learning and research communities (now relaunched as Intute)
• RDN-LTSN partnerships: UKOLN provided technical coordination for the RDN/LTSN partnership activity.
• Renardus: Academic Subject Gateway Service Europe.
• Repositories Research Team: supporting the JISC Digital Repositories Programme and the JISC Capital Programme Repositories and Preservation Strand.
• Repositories Support Project: building UK repositories and content.
• ROADS: Resource Organisation and Discovery in Subject-based Services.
• Revealweb: the national database of resources in accessible formats.
• RSLP Collection Description: enabling consistent collection description across Research Support Libraries Programme funded projects.
• SCHEMAS: Forum for Metadata Schema Implementors.
• Scientific Data Application Profile Scoping Study: a study determining the feasibility and utility of a Dublin Core Application Profile supporting the discovery and delivery of scientific research datasets.
• Social Web Workshops: UKOLN organised a series of social Web and Web 2.0 workshops for the cultural heritage sector.
• Start-up and Enhancement Projects Training (SUETr): the objectives of SUETr were to develop and deliver a series of comprehensive targeted training workshops and seminars for JISC Start-up and Enhancement (SUE) projects to address their shared concerns in a collaborative and practical context.
• Stories from the Web
• Subject Portals Project: developing subject based portals and producing a 'software tool-kit' for portal construction.
• SWORDv2 Project: funded by JISC, under the Information Environment 2011 Programme, to extend repository deposit to cover the wider scholarly communication infrastructure.
• Tap into Bath: a source of knowledge about museums, art galleries, archives and libraries in Bath.
• TF-CHIC: Cooperative Hierarchical Indexing Coordination.
• Treasure Island: a model for integrating the Internet into children's services.
• Terminology Registry Scoping Study: a UKOLN-led project to analyse issues related to the potential delivery of a Terminology Registry as a shared infrastructure service within the JISC Information Environment.
• WebWatch: audit and monitor of design practice and use of technologies on the Web.
• Writeslike.us: a Rapid Innovation project: a JISC-funded project exploring the automated extraction of information about community structures. It is led by UKOLN at the University of Bath, with the University of Minho as a partner.
• Z39.50 in Europe: A listing of Z39.50 systems and services in Europe.
• Z-directory: a directory of UK Z39.50 servers.

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