Of possible interest to the list.
________________________________ From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julie Allinson Sent: 11 March 2011 10:50 To: jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk Subject: JISC Automating Quality Assurance Project, event invitation Hi everyone, The JISC Automating Quality Assurance (AQuA) Project, is running two three-day events where we are hoping to bring together those with significant expertise in curation and/or preservation technology, with people managing large collections of digital materials. The aim is to find lightweight, reusable solutions to common quality assurance problems. The information below provides more details. I hope members of the list will find the events interesting, and sign up. Many thanks, Julie Do you have large amounts of digital content to look after? How well do you know your digital content? Is your file what it says it is? Do your users do your QA for you? Intimidated by digital preservation tools? These and many more questions will be explored and hopefully answered by the Automating Quality Assurance Project (AQuA) project events in April and June 2011. Are you a coder, technical expert, collection curator, digital preservation practitioner or a little of each? Then come along and partcipate in the AQuA events, to be held 11-13 April 2011 and 13-15 June 2011, where we will bring together digital preservation practitioners, collection curators and technical experts to automate quality assurance of our digital collections. Preservation or quality issues can occur in our digital content from many sources: * When we create the content via digitisation (eg. missing pages, duplicate pages, poor focus/contrast) * When the collection is stored (eg. bit rot) * When the collection is processed or moved from store to store (eg. when processes run out of memory or disk space) * When technology changes (eg. when our standards and file formats become obsolete) Manually checking material for these kinds of problems is laborious, challenging and, most critically, expensive. Checking samples of material reduces the cost, but can let through problematic quality issues. Automated tools that can check every digital item in a precise way should allow us to reduce our costs and increase the overall quality of our digital collections. The AQuA events will provide the opportunity to get hands on experience of developing and applying digital preservation techniques and technology to digital collections. Whether you're a non-technical collection manager with content to validate, or a techie ready to get to grips with some real life digital preservation problems, we need you! University of Leeds, 11th - 13th April 2011: Join us for our first Mashup retreat at the beautiful Weetwood Hall Conference Centre and Hotel British Library, London, 13th - 15th June 2011: Get involved in our second AQuA Mashup in the heart of London at the UK's National Library Inspiring locations, cross discipline collaboration, challenges and prizes, and evening social events. Plus it's FREE! Accommodation and refreshments are paid for. More info at http://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/AQuA/Home Register at http://aquamashup.eventbrite.com Questions - by email to digi...@leeds.ac.uk AQuA is a JISC funded collaborative project between the University of Leeds, the University of York, the British Library and Open Planets Foundation. -- Julie Allinson <julie.allin...@york.ac.uk> <mailto:julie.allin...@york.ac.uk> Digital Library Manager University Library & Archives, J.B. Morrell Library University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, UK tel: ++44 (0) 1904 324083 skype: j.allinson web: http://dlib.york.ac.uk/ blog: http://yorkdl.wordpress.com/ projects: http://www.york.ac.uk/digitallibrary/ (JISC YODL-ING, OpenART, LIFE-SHARE, AQuA, ESRC IRIS, AHRC Court, Country, City) calendar: http://tinyurl.com/jal-cal disclaimer: http://www.york.ac.uk/docs/disclaimer/email.htm --
