Lets Free IT Support Materials

1
Lets Free IT Support Materials!

• Brian Kelly
• UK Web Focus
• UKOLN
• University of Bath

Co-authors Gareth Knight, AHDS Jo Casey,
University of York Marieke Guy, UKOLN
Acknowledgments We are grateful to JISC for
funding the QA Focus project described in this
paper
Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk URL http//www.ukoln.ac.
uk/
UKOLN is supported by
2
Contents
Introduction

• Introduction
• Case Study QA Focus
• Creative Commons What Can it Provide?
• Implementation
• Application Elsewhere
• Conclusions
• Questions

3
About Me
Introduction

• Brian Kelly
• UK Web Focus a Web advisory post for UK HE and
  FE and cultural heritage communities
• Based at UKOLN a national centre of expertise
  in digital information management
• Project manager for JISC-funded QA Focus project
• Funding by JISC (Joint Information Systems
  Committee) and MLA (Museums, Libraries and
  Archives Council)

4
About This Paper
Introduction

• This paper
• Describes the JISC-funded QA Focus project
• Explains the reasons why it was decided to give
  away the project deliverables
• Describes the Creative Commons licence and why it
  was felt to be applicable
• Summarises the implementation issues
• Outlines other areas in which this case study can
  be applied
• Gives recommendations to
• Funding bodies
• Organisations

5
QA Focus
QA Focus

• QA Focus
• JISC-funded project
• Developed a quality assurance framework to
  support JISCs digital library programmes
• Provided by UKOLN (University of Bath) and AHDS
  (Kings College London)
• Funded from Jan 2002-July 2004
• Successfully
• Developed a lightweight QA framework
• Published a range of support materials
• Described approaches in peer-reviewed papers
  (EUNIS 2003, ichim03, ECDL 2004)
• See lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/gt

6
QA Focus Exit Strategies (1)
QA Focus

• QA Focus
• Initially funded from Jan 2002 - Dec 2003
• Extended from Jan-Jul 2004
• Our challenge
• Explore options for exit strategy
• Implement chosen solution
• The context
• Project partners had developed v. effective
  working relationships
• Area of work closely linked with core missions
• Partners keen to exploit expertise gained in
  other areas
• Desire to embed QA framework more widely

7
QA Focus Exit Strategies (2)
QA Focus

• The main options
• Continued funding
• Discussed possibility with JISC, but no
  additional funding available
• Income generation options
• Unlikely to generate significant income
• Would be time-consuming to implement
• Give resources away
• Would help to maximise impact
• Could help sustainability of resources
• Reflects culture of sharing (e.g. open source,
  open access, )

8
Open Access Decision
QA Focus

• QA Focus project partners
• Agreed to give resources away
• Decision made for business (and not ideological)
  reasons
• Maximise impact of QA framework (e.g. to
  institutions hosting JISC projects and not just
  the projects)
• Maximise outreach to other sectors (e.g. museums,
  libraries archives international digital
  library community ..)
• Potential for sustainability of resources (others
  maintain resources and develop new ones)
• Then had to decide how to give resources away

9
Open Access Options
QA Focus

• The main options
• Putting resources in public domain
• What does this mean?
• Does it provide flexibility we may need?
• GNU, BSD, ... style licence
• Mature licences with clear licence conditions
• Creative Commons licence
• Under development during QA Focus life
• Provides rich set of licence conditions
• Enables machine-readable licences to be provided

10
Creative Commons

• Creative Commons
• Legal mechanism for assigning rights to others
• Can assign various (11) rights
• Commercial/non-commercial attribution
• Can describe rights in machine-readable form
  (RDF)
• CC-aware search engines can be used to search
  CC-space

Creative Commons
11
Implementation
QA Focus

• Implementation issues we needed to address
• Scope What resources would be covered?
• Selected (70) briefing documents and not case
  studies
• Selected briefing documents authored in-house
• Ownership Could project members make this
  decision on their own?
• Decision agreed by UKOLN/AHDS management groups
  and host institutions
• Timeliness CC licence not ratified for UK use
• Discussed implications with JISC Legal service
• CC (then) had no legal status
• Chose to have clear statement alongside CC
  licence
• (Low) risk would be taken by users of CC-licensed
  resources and not ourselves

12
Wider Application - UCISA

• Clear potential for wider use of CC licences
• We made contact with UCISA TLIG (Teaching
  learning and Information Group) committee
• National body whose remit includes IT Service
  support materials
• Has provided a document sharing archive for 15
  years
• Author was committee member in early 1990s
• UCISA TLIG experiences can help inform wider IT
  Services community

UCISA Document Sharing Archives
13
UCISA-TLIG Document Archive
http//www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/tlig/docs/docshare.h
tm

• The UCISA-TLIG document sharing archive
• Centralised set of links to IT Services document
  catalogues
• Departments can chose to join scheme (11
  currently)

Note that pre-Web departments had to upload
documents to central locations
14
UCISA-TLIG Document Archive

• The archive reflects spirit of sharing across the
  community.
• But the document archive has had limited
  effectiveness (only 11 orgs., broken searching,
  ) due to
• Uncertainty of legal issues
• Can I give stuff away how do I do this
• Uncertainty of institutional view
• Are we in competition with other institutions
  are we expected to generate income
• Centralised approach
• Centralised maintenance, indexing, resource
  issues
• Things have now changed
• Benefits of open access, open source widely
  accepted
• Legal issues more clear
• Distributed approaches now possible

UCISA Document Sharing Archives
15
Benefits To Be Gained

• How can IT Service departments benefit from more
  actively participating with a re-launched
  archive
• Can help promote your institution (cf MITs
  decision to make its courseware)
• Can free staff resources for other tasks
• Gain experience of issues in other
  (mission-critical) areas e.g. open access for
  teaching learning and research resources
• Gain experiences in technical issues e.g.
  managing, indexing, RDF version of licences
• Other benefits
• Avoiding duplication benefits funder, tax-payer,
  gives back-office savings (cf. Gershon
  review)

UCISA Document Sharing Archives
16
Possible Concerns

• Possible concerns
• My stuff is being stolen
• OTOH you will benefit from stuff you use
• Maximises benefits of public funding
• You can chose to go down this route
• My competitors get my stuff for free
• Legitimate concern, esp. if envisage exploitation
  of resources
• QA Focus chose non-commercial use CC licence to
  avoid use by others in bids
• Deskilling staff
• IT staff continually have to learn new skills
• Provides new opportunities for staff

17
Wider Potential

• Benefits of Creative Commons licences can be
  obtained in other areas
• Maximise impact of national initiatives (e.g.
  JISC-funded development programmes, )
• Staff development initiatives (e.g. )
• And can provide unexpected benefits
• Clarification of legal issues for long-term
  archiving of project deliverables (current work
  requires project holders to sign form that rights
  issues have been clarified)
• Avoidance of vexatious rights owners
• More general clarification of ownership issues

18
Complementing Approaches

• Additional technologies have been used to help
  maximise impact resources
• RSS feeds of QA Focus documents
• Allows metadata to be embedded by third parties

19
Conclusions

• To conclude
• Projects can maximise impact by 'giving'
  resources away (with appropriate licence)
• Creative Commons can provide variety of licence
  conditions and searching mechanisms
• These experiences (and benefits) are also
  applicable to IT services
• Such decisions can be made based on sound
  business reasons
• Do it!

QA Focus briefing document are available (under
CC licence) from lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/
documents/briefings/gt (including "An Introduction
To Creative Commons" )
20
Questions

• Any questions?