"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.

About

Brian Kelly presented a paper on Reflecting on Yesterday, Understanding Today, Planning for Tomorrow at the Umbrella 2013 Conference (note the original confernce Web site is no longer available. A copy is available on the Intenrte Archive). The conference was held on 2-3^rd July 2013 at the University of Manchester, Manchester.

Abstract

The JISC Observatory provides horizon-scanning of technological developments which may be of relevant for the UK's higher and further education sectors. The JISC Observatory team has developed systematic processes for the scanning, sense-making and synthesis activities for the work. This paper summarises the JISC Observatory work and related activities carried out by the authors. The paper outlines how the processes can be applied in a local context to ensure that institutions are able to gather evidence in a systematic way and understand and address the limitations of evidence-gathering processes. The paper describes use of open processes for interpreting the evidence and suggests possible implications of the horizon-scanning activities for policy-making and informing operational practices. The paper concludes by encouraging take-up of open approaches in gathering and interpretation of evidence used to inform policy-making in an institutional context.

Paper

The paper has been uploaded to Opus, the University of Bath repository.

Reflecting on Yesterday, Understanding Today, Planning for Tomorrow (pre-print)

[About] - [PDF] - [MS Word]

Slides

The slides used in this presentation are also available.

Reflecting on Yesterday, Understanding Today, Planning for Tomorrow (slides)

[About] - [MS PowerPoint format]

Note that this presentation is also available on the Slideshare repository and embedded below.

 

Biographical Details (Brief)

Brian works for UKOLN, University of Bath where he advises the UK's HE/FE sectors on ways Web developments. Brian's work for the JISC Observatory helps to identify emerging technological developments, as described in "What Next for Libraries? Making Sense of the Future" presented at the EMTACL (Emerging Technologies in Academic Libraries) conference in Trondheim.