Highlights
Click image to watch the new ORDS video (on YouTube).
Another great quarter for actively engaging the researchers: the Things to do with data, Data visualization and Corpus Linguistics seminar series, training in using ORDS, XML editing with Oxygen, the TEI Guidelines, XPath Searching, agent-based modelling, and a new 3-hour practical course about using Blender for visualization. We have also delivered RDM training for the social sciences, MPLS, and Humanities divisions, for the NERC doctoral training programme, and via ITLP.
The IT Services ORDS early-life support team is approaching the final stages in terms of fixing bugs and formalising the application management with the software solutions and infrastructure teams. We also released a new ORDS demo video.
The IT Services Redds project has started to scope and specify the deposit interface to ORA Data.
Sadly, Mark Johnson left IT Services to join the Open University
The IT Services lecture capture project has started where we will lead on evaluating alternative software for recording and sharing presentations.
The EU VALS project is in the final phase and our contribution will be focused on evaluation and recommendations.
The IT Services Web CMS project is up and running again and we are leading the definition of user requirements and piloting templates with researchers.
The EU DiXiT project has delivered a number of training events across Europe.
We continue to contribute to the CLARIN ERIC network focusing on user involvement in language resources and tools, and to contribute to the setting up of a UK consortium of research institutions aiming to develop infrastructure for sharing digital linguistic data and tools.
We are providing IP expertise to the Jisc Brisskit project team.
We have begun the IT Services Live data to scope a set of data visualization services.
We have been given the go-ahead to investigate how to better support research who need to manage participant data (IT Services Participant Data project will start Sep 2015).
Sadly we had to say goodbye to Mark Johnson who has joined the Open University. Mark made an enormous contribution to the team over the last 3 years working on ORDS, developing Drupal, leading on open source advice and starring in several vodcasts. We saw Mark off at the local with a few games of DiXit (yes, he won) and Ergo (designed by Brian and Brent Knudson) – possible the nerdiest game ever invented.
Progress against plans for last 3 months
Engagement statistics, December to February 2015
- Plans are still in formation regarding how we will report to the research IT committee (with the libraries and other service owners).
- We have agreed to drop the application for funding for the OxLangCloud project and instead support a pilot of the CQPweb software run by OeRC and Linguistics faculty
- We have started the Live Data project and been given the go ahead to run a project focused on participant data
Plans for next 3 months
- Hand over ORDS software maintenance to Software Solutions
- Finish the Live Data project PID
- Embed the FrontRange system in our team practices
- Write an innovation fund project focused on visualization of large data sets
- Finish a new documentary style video about research data and update the openspires website