tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69045192363836701082024-02-18T22:49:19.805-08:00Building the Research Information Infrastructure (BRII)Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-67872543326683628022010-08-09T08:23:00.000-07:002010-08-12T07:33:18.104-07:00Uncovering hidden connections in Research Activity DataI recently submited an article to Sconul Focus which, I hope, will be published in a few months time. The topic of the article was data harvesting and aggregation. A simple and (hopefuly) easy to read explanation of a rather complex topic. I used our entity registry as an example and described how it harvests data from University and external sources, how it converts sources into RDF format so Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-14070641702492404272010-07-13T04:14:00.000-07:002010-07-13T04:22:04.514-07:00Southampton ECS release their data into the public domainThe School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton releases all public data in open linked data format."In what is believed also to be a world-first, ECS has become the UK’s first University department to release all its public data in open linked data format.The School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton is at the Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-52855544058625352282010-06-30T04:17:00.001-07:002010-06-30T05:21:23.829-07:00BRII Summer ProjectThis another update to explain our summer 2010 activities. At BRII we are working on a reporting system where users can notify us and official sources of data about errors they find in Research Activity Data. This system will help us and our sources to improve the quality of data. As we are harvesting data from other sources we are designing a system were users can flag errors and send Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-15637701281956382332010-06-29T03:58:00.001-07:002010-06-29T04:21:37.994-07:00Advisory Group MeetingOn Friday 2nd of July we will have our first advisory group meeting after the BRII Project ended. The advisory group is comprised of 10 stakeholders from across the University. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss avenues for development of the Entity Registry and related services (i.e. Blue Pages) and strategies for embedding these services within the University. This of course will be a Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-76354956319056039942010-06-17T04:51:00.000-07:002010-06-17T08:00:31.132-07:00BRII at the SCONUL ConferenceYesterday I attended the "Organisational Leadership in a Time of Change" SCONUL Conference at Leeds Queens Hotel. Although I could not stay for the whole event (I stayed only 1 of 3 days) I enjoyed it. I attended a few presentations and presented our BRII poster.I would like to thank Prof John Lancaster who welcomed me and who kindly helped me to move the BRII poster to a more visible place :)Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-1969230577149109182010-05-13T04:17:00.000-07:002010-05-18T04:06:43.264-07:00BRII UpdateThis is a short update on our activities and some ideas I have come up with.Since the end of the BRII project we have been working on the registry and user engagement. We are adding more data continuously. We are also outlining data quality control processes and planning some activities with users to evaluate our work.Outcomes of our work in BRII gave us some insights into what the requirements Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-47728468652495919652010-04-01T04:24:00.000-07:002010-04-07T08:47:34.722-07:00End of ProjectThe BRII project has officially concluded. However development and user engagement work are still ongoing. We will continue to add data to the registry and go around the Univeristy selling our outputs and asking people for more feedback. We will keep you updated on our progress here and in our website http://brii.bodleian.ox.ac.ukIf you want to know more about our outputs and outcomes, have a Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-50639967901183257372010-03-19T08:07:00.000-07:002010-03-22T07:58:58.889-07:00Blue Pages video clipAs the project will end soon (31st of March) I wanted to show you what we have done so far with the Blue Pages. We will not stop working though. We will continue working on harvesting more data and user engagement. Anusha and Mat have been working tirelessly on the Blue Pages and although there is still a lot of work to be done on it I think it is at a stage where I can show you a short demo. Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-48747820494855753652010-03-08T03:27:00.000-08:002010-03-11T07:32:11.852-08:00BRII PresentationOn Friday 5th of March I attended a book launch at the University of Hull - Business School. The book is titled "Supporting research students" by Dr Barbara Allan."The importance of supporting the needs of research students has recently risen higher up the academic agenda around the world. Numbers of postgraduate students have expanded, and the traditional PhD has now been joined by a new range Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-61699800344869757512010-03-02T03:41:00.001-08:002010-03-03T03:35:28.453-08:00Project EvaluationWe just finished our Project Evaluation report. The project's summative evaluation took place on the 19th of February and was directed by Neil Beagrie from Charles Beagrie Ltd. As part of this evaluation Neil ran an online survey with a sample of our interviewees and testers. The results were very positive. We chose people who knew about BRII and who had at least seen a demo or tested the Blue Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-68620282818037670712010-02-22T04:08:00.000-08:002010-02-22T06:38:48.547-08:00Uncovering User Perceptions of Research Activity DataI recently wrote a paper about the user testing of the Oxford Blue Pages. It has been published in Ariadne in their January 2010 issue. Here you have a link to the article in Ariadne www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue62/loureiroKoechlin The title is Uncovering User Perceptions of Research Activity Data. I chose that title to emphasise the aspect of the user testing which we think helped us the most to Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-4190893371263150352010-02-12T07:39:00.000-08:002010-03-03T03:37:29.006-08:00The BRII Project Use Cases Report is readyThe BRII Project Use Cases report is ready and available in PDF format from here. The Use Cases report contains four short, business-style use cases illustrating the uses and benefits of the BRII project outputs.Any comments about the report are welcome. (Click on comments below or email me.)Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-4614322976519763182010-01-27T19:11:00.000-08:002010-01-28T03:29:01.237-08:00BRII's Products - JISC Trade FairThese are posters I designed for the Institutional Innovation Projects Trade Fair. The posters explain our three products: a vocab site, an approach to user testing and the Blue Pages.Click on pictures to get larger versionsWe have many more products of course but these are the ones I thought could be more attractive to other projects. In addition to the above, we have produced an object registryCecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-13402850754617764752010-01-20T04:14:00.000-08:002010-01-20T04:40:02.963-08:00Institutional Innovation Projects Trade FairI have been working on the products I will offer in the Projects Traid Fair, part of the JISC Institutional Innovation Exchange event. I have designed a couple of posters to explain my three products. These will be:The Vocabulary site storing the new vocabularies created by BRII providing formal descriptions of concepts, terms and relationships within the "research" knowledge domain (funder Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-76444528216456186032010-01-12T06:37:00.000-08:002010-03-03T03:38:35.607-08:00What is going on in BRIISince September we have been carrying out user tests of the Oxford Blue pages. These tests have been very useful to improve the Blue Pages usability and to get the perspectives of potential users. These perspectives were not limited to the Blue Pages but to the BRII registry. After seeing the Blue Pages testers asked about the sources of data and the processes of updating these in the registry. Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-25777567416317183682009-12-11T12:32:00.000-08:002009-12-11T13:09:42.178-08:00JISC MEAoT AssemblyYesterday I attended a JISC assembly organised by the Modular e-Administration of Teaching MEAoT Project run by CARET - Cambridge University. The aim of the event was to explore ways in which stakeholders and other parties can be encouraged to adopt tools developed in JISC projects. Below you can see my presentation:The second slide briefly explains the nature of BRII and the Entity Registry we Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-89947128074239391122009-11-27T06:13:00.000-08:002010-03-03T03:40:03.108-08:00BRII's Entity StoreIn our internal meetings we use the term Registry or Entity Registry to refer to the Research Information Infrastructure. Wanting to know a bit more about the meaning and technological features of such kind of store I asked Anusha. She gave me the following lecture:Cecilia: What is an Entity Registry and what is the difference with conventional stores?Anusha: Lets first list our entities, so we Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-82267245948480798982009-11-18T08:59:00.000-08:002009-11-23T07:49:19.333-08:00Blue Pages - User Tests 3We have just started a third round of user tests of the Oxford Blue Pages. This time tests focus on research collaborations. Collaborations can happen in projects, when writing (books, articles, etc,) or they can be informal exchanges of knowledge. The Blue Pages will display the collaborators of researchers as far as data is available. Names of collaborators will be extracted from publications, Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-62513376820405021682009-10-30T04:17:00.001-07:002010-03-03T03:40:32.718-08:00Blue Pages - User Tests 2After 3 intense weeks Anusha, Monica and I have completed a second round of user tests. This time no mock ups but with the real thing, which of course is the Blue Pages v0.00 :) We did 15 tests with a selection of academics, students, administrators and one research facilitator. Again feedback has proved to be an eye opener, and is helping us on our design.Tests lasted an average of 45 minutes Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-64290835426185910272009-10-26T08:36:00.000-07:002010-03-03T03:40:54.707-08:00BRII Inside O.R.This week I got a copy of the Inside O.R. magazine - November issue with a short article about BRII. I wrote this article after the OR51 conference (Operational Research) where I presented a paper called Making Sense of Research Activity Information in the Information Systems stream.Thanks to Rajan Anketell, Inside O.R. editor.Click here to download whole issue.Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-14918793332773561812009-10-02T16:54:00.000-07:002010-05-25T04:31:11.687-07:00Institutional Repositories: acceptance and adoptionI have been reading some literature about institutional (digital) repositories. I am interested in the human and social issues surrounding their development and implementation as well as their embedding. I think this literature is very relevant to BRII as it reports experiences in similar implementations (not necessarily technically but conceptually) in similar kinds of institutions.Technically Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-74024859633913424142009-09-17T13:37:00.000-07:002009-09-18T01:10:58.143-07:00Data, ideas and moreYesterday, I met with Luis Martinez Uribe, Digital Repositories Research Coordinator, to talk about research data. Luis is working in the The Embedding Institutional Data Curation Services in Research (EIDCSR) project which looks at research data management and curation challenges. Previously he worked in the Scoping digital repository services for research data management project where he Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-46234184744848268952009-09-11T04:46:00.000-07:002009-09-12T12:17:04.780-07:00Making Sense of Research Activity InformationThis week I attended the Operational Research OR51 conference at the University of Warwick. This is a big conference for the OR people. A very exciting event. I gave a presentation in the Information Systems stream, having previously submitted an abstract. We started conference activities on Tuesday morning, but there was dinner and a wine tasting welcome event on Monday evening. :)The Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-58081889912219992882009-09-01T03:25:00.000-07:002009-09-02T03:11:45.133-07:00JISC SSBR NewsletterThe JISC Institutional Innovation programme has released a new issue of their Support, Synthesis and Benefits Realisation (SSBR) Newsletter. (Issue Six - 1 September 2009.) We are happy to see that we are featured on the front page, or is it the first paragraph? :)Activity slowed a little over the past few weeks? Looking at the significant progress made by many projects, it appears not. BRII haveCecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6904519236383670108.post-82321511458842591362009-08-28T09:39:00.000-07:002009-09-02T05:45:13.696-07:00Beyond the Repository Fringe 2009Sally and Ben were in Edinburgh last month attending the Beyond the Repository Fringe 2009, an event for repository developers, managers, researchers, administrators and onlookers.They shared central stage when they gave the opening keynote speech. This is what they said:Ben O’Steen and Sally Rumsey (Oxford) – “A sneak preview at the A-list stars of future repositories: blockbuster technical Cecilia Loureiro-Koechlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14423580446222057290noreply@blogger.com0