MIDESS

The MIDESS Project is a JISC funded project that will explore the management of digitised content in an institutional and cross-institutional context through the development of a digital repository infrastructure. It will address how support can be provided for the use of digital content in a learning and research context, in an integrated manner. It will also explore how use and management of digital content can be joined up in a national context.

A number of University Libraries in the UK have embarked on digitisation programmes, and a large amount of content has been generated as a result of these initiatives. However, few institutions have as yet, seriously explored the management of digitised content through a digital content infrastructure. Digitised content typically tends to be available through unstructured or semi-structured html pages, or managed through propriety systems which do provide for adequate exposure, sharing or ere-use of materials, Awareness and use of digitised collections created by libraries - whether for teaching or research - is consequently, quite low.

Issues such as metadata creation and management, effective searching and retrieval, re-use of content in an e-learning context and digital preservation are also poorly understood and not widely implemented.

Digital content is also being created by academic staff within institutions, primarily to support learning and teaching. Examples might include digitised film clips used in a classroom situation, and medical slides used in a laboratory environment. Digital content is often embedded in a virtual learning environment, or made available to students through a course web page. These activities are often quite widespread within an institution, but opportunities for the sharing and re-use of this type of content - which is expensive to create-might be lost because there is no institution-wide facility for the shared management and use of the content.

On a national and international level there is currently little joined-up thinking about the creation and management of digital content. Thus institutions may be duplicating effort by digitising material that has already been digitised elsewhere, or may be missing opportunities to work together to create complementary collections. The sharing of collections across institutions is quite rare.

The MIDESS project will explore the management of digitised content in an institutional and cross institutional content through the development of a distributed digital repository infrastructure. It will address how support can be provided for the use of digital content in a learning and research context, in an integrated manner. It will also explore how use and management of digital content can be joined in a national context.

The project will run until 31st August 2007