Back from 'Heart of Lothian'!

See: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/jiscconference09/programme.aspx

The JISC conference last week was enjoyable. Managed to chat with Scott Wilson & Mark Stubbs (XCRI-CAP), the Bolton Uni crew (Chris, Chris and Jon - another JISC project) and some ex-colleagues from Keele - always informative.

I did the JISC Projects demo stand with Sue Lee on the Tues morning - was very quick and ok - not really appropriate venue (conference foyet) for getting across information about validation systems and repositories.

In terms of what I saw - the keynote speaches were ok, although didn't quite know where to place the presentation from Lizbeth Goodman - although interesting in regards to helping self-expression for those with disabilities - couldn't see the broader application into wider learning (and beyond the arts). Although - personally - I enjoyed the Geo-location games!

For the main workshops/ sessions - I went to:

1. Towards the academic library of the future

• http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/jiscconference09/programme/libraryofthefuture.aspx
  
• Very interesting presentation about how libraries are coping with a digital world
• Not sure what conclusion they had other than students need academic literacy training
  

2. Geo-spatial worlds - how they can benefit researchers and educators in all disciplines

• http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/jiscconference09/programme/geo-spatial.aspx
  
• Most of the presentations were excellent and very interesting
• I posed a question about quality resources for academics / researchers - seems that EDINA and Digimaps will remain a diffult service to access, so won't be rimvalling Google - not surprising really as EDINA don't have 1 million servers.
• Same issue came up - students need training in using the mapping technology to get anythig worthwhile out - Google is too crude a tool to be valid (for now!??)

p.s. Here's a bit of fun for all you Marillion fans (see title of Blog Post)

DIVAS Update

Despite the lack of blog postings - things are progressing, well as far as Sean's work (originally posted him as Shaun) is concerned.

Off to Edinburgh next week for a meeting - JISC projects.

I guess we will see if everything works as expected when the upload widget is done for testing.

Working Forward

Met with Sean and Sam today about the user interface for uploading documents to HIVE (creating XCRI XML file). Has been some good progress here.

Haven't Forgot DIVAS

No haven't forgotten about the DIVAS project. Just not much happening from my side - things have moved focus over to Sam and Shaun's side of things (technical). When we have something to play with - I will post a new.

XML Beans

Not much to post - but thought it pertinent to post that Shaun is using XML Beans to help the process of developing the web services Sam and Shaun are developing for uploading documents to HIVE and recording the associated data in XCRI-CAP.

"XMLBeans uses XML Schema to compile Java interfaces and classes that can then be used to access and modify XML instance data." Wikipedia

I am currently working developing a cut-down schematic of the XCRI-CAP diagram to outline what elements we are using from the schema. In addition, the details of drop-down lists (where applicable).

New Year! XCRI & HIVE Breakthrough

Happy 2009!!

So far so good - had an email from Sam to say that he has made a major breakthrough with developing an interactive schema for entering metadata against documents being uploaded to HIVE.

Sam says:

I've got Hive working with a revised version of XCRI CAP metadata. In this version, I've replaced all the XML attributes (Hive can’t cope with attributes) with XML elements. I've also added faculty as an extension of the course metadata and allowed more than one faculty to be associated with it. Attached is the schema definition if you want the details.

I've created and SDI file and wired it in so the metadata can be used in Hive. It's in and working but it's got a few usability issues. We could do with meeting up at some point to figure out how to refine the interface so it works best. If you want to have a look at the interface, just try adding an item of type "Validation document". The XCRI element-only metadata is associated with this type.

This is a modified version of the XCRI-CAP. I will look into it and test it's output. Shaun is currently working on an upload interface that assists users in uploading and 'marking up' documents - making the process a lot easier (hopefully).

Well done everyone!