Wednesday 28th September 2011, 4-6pm, Roberts G06 Sir Ambrose Fleming LT, UCL, Gower St, London WC1, followed by a reception in the Department of Information Studies Teaching Room, G31.

This fourth seminar of 2011 will be chaired by Anthony Watkinson, University College London.

EPUB is the standard intended to enable the effective publishing of e-books. EPUB3, the latest revision now becoming finalised, has been hailed as of particular importance to the industry. Yet there is not a lot of understanding of how it works and what it can do and of course some criticism. The purpose of this forum is to provide both a careful and independent explanation of EPUB and also to give examples from companies working with the standard about what it means for their publishing programme and how they handle the implementation.

There will be three speakers, an expert on standards, a publisher and a supplier

Graham Bell, the chief Data Architect of EDItEUR and previously in charge of production systems at HarperCollins, will ground the forum with a technical explanation of what the standard is, what it covers, how it works and what the snags are.

James Long, the Editorial Director Digital of Pan Macmillan, will speak as a publisher investing in EPUB as a key to serious commercial exploitation of their e-book programme and explain how the company is making it work for them.

James Macfarlane, CEO of Easypress Technologies, will concentrate on the production side of the picture, explaining how an international online publishing software company can work effectively with publishers.

Link to the registration details

Four students have just returned from the first Archives and Records Challenges in the Digital Information Society (ARCHIDIS) Intensive Programme. Funded by a European Union Erasmus grant, this two week event saw students from eight European countries coming together to discuss the topic of Appraisal and Social Memory. ARCHIDIS certainly lived up to its ‘intensive’ label, but was both a very enjoyable experience and a valuable learning opportunity, which has greatly furthered participants’ awareness and understanding of the different appraisal traditions and practices across Europe. Thanks go to all the organisers and funders, and especially to the Archivschule in Marburg, Germany, which provided a wonderful setting for the fortnight.

Last week Nick Canty spent two days lecturing at the University of Paris XIII on their MA Publishing course.

The course in Paris is taught in English. Students choose either an editorial or marketing stream and take options that will develop their specific career interests. Two days a week are spent in industry working in a publishing house.

UCL Department of Information Studies and The University of Paris signed a formal agreement in 2010 for a five year collaboration in teaching, research and students exchanges.

Some exciting news this month is that funding has been received in the form of an eLearning Development Grant to support the creation of new learning resources for delivery next year as part of the Department’s archives and records management programmes. These resources will guide students through two scenarios based on problems faced by archivists working in today’s digital environment.

This environment offers both opportunities and challenges. Opportunities in that new technologies have the potential to revolutionise the way in which archives and records are created, accessed and interpreted. Challenges in that the techniques and tools needed to ensure the long term preservation of born-digital material are still very much in development. The primary objective of this project is to ensure that students are better prepared to work within this environment, not just by ensuring that they are equipped with specific professional skills, but also by enhancing more broadly their digital literacy, that is their ability to work in today’s online, connected and global workplace.

Please visit the forum website, for full information and registration details: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/digital-publishing-forum/

I am delighted to report that the Transcribe Bentham project has won an award of distinction in the highly prestigious Prix Ars Electronica. Transcribe Bentham is a collaborative project led by Professor Philip Schofield of UCL Laws, and including UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (based in DIS) and UCL Library Services and the University of London Computing Centre. The inspiration for the project came from Dr Melissa Terras, Reader in Electronic Communication at DIS, and deputy director of UCLDH. We are delighted to have been part in such an exciting project, and feel duly honoured by this award. For more information, please see the entry on the UCLDH blog.

30 JUNE – 1 JULY 2011
SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE ACADEMY: Enhancing and enabling scholarly communication

The aim of this series of conferences is to examine scholarly communication and discourse in an environment of digital transition with an emphasis on research findings and practical experience of scholars and on the role of information professionals as facilitators. Previous events have examined how scholars work online, whether publications are reflecting or will reflect scholarly practice in communication and last year the growing importance of digital data to scholars and the scholarship.

This year’s conference looks at how scholars use social media in the research process. Social media is a concept with uncertain bounds. For this event the keyword is collaboration. It is recognised that scholars do not work in isolation from general online behaviour, from the public space and from the infrastructure of scholarship. It is also clear that traditional barriers between formal and informal scholarly communication are now porous. There will be presentations on the use of specific tools and general movements such as e-science but recent work with focus groups following up the CIBER Charleston Observatory (November 2010) – see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/social-media-report.pdf – has indicated the extent to which individual scholars and groups are finding their own ways of working. Disciplinary differences are important. Each session will end with time for questions to be asked and for the audience to interact.

Full full information, please visit the conference website at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/e-publishing/

20 June–1 July 2011 – UCL/Pratt-SILS e-Publishing Summer School.

We are holding a summer school for MA LIS students from the USA and others, including younger publishers.