**Please circulate widely to interested parties** _______________________________________
*JISC Call for Proposals Pre-announcement* *Focus on Access to Institutional Resources Programme (FAIR)* A Call for Proposals will be issued in early January 2002 with expected closing date in late February 2002. This pre-announcement alerts the HE/FE community to the call and allows institutions to explore possible partnerships or consortium proposals in advance of the call being issued. The JISC is establishing a new programme in which a number of projects will be funded to disclose and deposit digital assets held within the higher education and further education community. The programme will also allow intelligence to be gathered about the technical, organisational and cultural challenges of these processes. It is intended that this programme *Focus on Access to Institutional Resources* will contribute to developing the mechanisms and supporting services to allow the submission and sharing of content generated by the HE/FE community. An important source of inspiration for this programme is the vision of the Open Archives Initiative that digital resources can be shared between organisations based on a simple mechanism which allows metadata about those resources to be harvested into services. For example in the e-prints community this is realised through data providers who mount the e-prints and then disclose their metadata to service providers who are able to organise and present this information for users. (http://www.openarchives.org) The FAIR Programme is interested in proposals for projects in the following areas: * Support the disclosure of institutional assets, including institutional eprint archives and other types of digital collections, and to explore the use of emerging protocols in this area, particularly the OAI (the Open Archives Initiative protocol) *Explore the usability of metadata disclosed and issues of harvesting institutional assets into subject-based and other services for example the Resource Discovery Network and the Arts and Humanities Data Service * Through deposit or disclosure of relevant resources, to augment existing collections which have proven learning, teaching or research value * Experiment with the embedding of JISC collections and services in local institutional portals and how well they can be presented in conjunction with institutionally managed assets *Investigate the collections management, technical, organisational and cultural challenges of institutional asset disclosure and deposit, including issues relating to the establishment and administration of institutionally provided services for digital collections It is hoped that all this work will lead to a much better understanding of the efficiency with which research and learning resources can be made more accessible and their visibility increased, and to explore the support and resources needed at a national and local level to allow this to take place as a core activity in the longer term. Higher and further education institutions funded via the UK funding bodies will be eligible to submit proposals. Proposals both from single institutions and consortia of institutions will be welcomed. As guidance, proposals for projects of from 1 to 3 years duration and with budgets ranging from £10,000 to £300,000 will be considered. The programme will commence in April/May 2002, though project start dates can be staggered and projects starting after July 31st 2002 will also be considered. This programme is part of the JISC Information Environment Development see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/development/IEstrategy.html ---------------------- Catherine Grout Assistant Director, Development JISC/DNER Office Strand Bridge House 138-142 Strand London WC2R 1HH UK voicemail: (0044) 0207 848 2493 fax: (0044) 0207 848 2939 e-mail: [email protected] --- End Forwarded Message --- ---------------------- Catherine Grout Assistant Director, Development JISC/DNER Office Strand Bridge House 138-142 Strand London WC2R 1HH UK voicemail: (0044) 0207 848 2493 fax: (0044) 0207 848 2939 e-mail: [email protected]
