History in Education: dispersed data delivery in action

I'm delighted to be able to draw attention to the data collection of the History in Education project, recently concluded at the IHR. The project investigated the major curricular changes in history over the last century, and also the changing experience of history at the chalkface in English state schools.

It is another successful example of a research project within the School of Advanced Study using SAS-Space as a solution for their needs in data management and preservation, whilst maintaining their own distinct web presence which draws content from SAS-Space as it needs it. The collection of interviews and digitised samples of schoolwork can be accessed in two ways. Users of the project site can access the data using a browse interface tailored to the project. Users of SAS-Space can access the whole collection directly, and may also stumble upon data from the project whilst searching SAS-Space for something else.

Another example of this dispersed model is the Francophone Music Criticism project, whose data is similarly held in SAS-Space, but also accessed from the project's own search engine.

Workshop event: Open Access journal publishing, Oct 20th

We've now finalised the programme for this afternoon workshop at Senate House; see the programme and further details.

The event is aimed at editors of existing printed journals who are contemplating a move towards online publication, and also at those planning to start a new journal title. There will be presentations from both a prospective new journal, and from the staff of Amicus Curiae, currently making the transition from print alone to a print-and-web solution.

There will also be an opportunity for delegates to discuss issues of common concern, including business models, marketing and staffing.

The event will also see the launch of our new SAS Open Journals system, in which Amicus Curiae will be the first journal.

To book a place, contact Peter.Webster@sas.ac.uk

How well used is SAS-Space ?

One of the recent new features of SAS-Space is the provision of download statistics for the materials that it holds, as PDF or in other formats. These are now shown at the foot of each item's page, under the Statistics tab. There is also a digest for the whole site.

Champion resource remains the Register of Research in Commonwealth Countries, from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, the various files for which were downloaded 2371 times since October 2010.

The most read paper was The Limits of Self-awareness by Michael Martin, originally published in Philosophical Studies in 2004, with 359 downloads. (See the graph below)

The top dissertation was from the Institute for the Study of the Americas: Mulherres do morro: the representation of women in Brazilian funk (2009), with 343 downloads.

The installation of the IRStats software add-on for Eprints that makes this possible was generously funded by the Dean's Development Fund of the School. It was installed for us by Richard and Rory from ULCC's Digital Archives team.

Creating unique collections: Caribbean history and culture

Part of the remit of the School is to provide services that would not be replicated elsewhere in the UK university sector. One example of how SAS-Space can help is the growing collection of scholarly resources for the history and culture of the Caribbean. There are two standard reference works for Commonwealth research from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies: Theses in Progress and the Register of Commonwealth Research.
However, these are complemented by other resources: a collection of articles on West Indian music in the Caribbean and England from an Associate Fellow of the ICwS; and articles on nineteenth and twentieth century history of Cuba from an Associate Fellow and a graduate student of the Institute for the Study of the Americas.

New articles from Amicus Curiae

Six articles from issue 84 of Amicus Curiae, the journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies / Society for Advanced Legal Studies are now available. This is in preparation for the journal's transition to the JISC-funded SAS Open Journals system.

Berlioz's 'Benvenuto Cellini'

A new collection of newspaper articles relating to the controversial Paris premiere of Berlioz's opera are now live.

Conference: Open access publishing in the arts and humanities

A symposium at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in association with SAS-Space

Friday, July 15th 2011
10am-4.10pm
Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DR

This symposium brings together academics, journal editors, publishers, librarians, funding bodies and repository practitioners to consider issues of particular concern in the arts and humanities. It will examine the economic and public policy aspects of humanities OA, as well as the different modes in which OA is currently delivered for scholars in the humanities.

Bookings for this conference are now closed. To be placed on a reserve list, please contact Dr Peter Webster (Peter.Webster@sas.ac.uk). Please include details of institution, position, and a full postal address.

Final programme

10.00 Arrivals and coffee
10.30 Welcome
10.40 The state of play: a personal view (Dr Peter Webster, SAS)

11.00 - 13.10 The context
11.00 - 11.20 The university library: Dr Paul Ayris (UCL)
11.20 - 11.40 The publisher's perspective I: Frances Pinter (Bloomsbury Academic)
11.40 - 12.00 The funder’s perspective I: Neil Jacobs (JISC)
12.00 - 12.20 The publisher's perspective II: Tessa Harvey (Wiley-Blackwell)
12.20 - 12.40 The funder’s perspective II: Professor Shearer West (AHRC)
12.40 - 13.10 Discussion

13.10-14.00 Lunch

14.00-16.00 Approaches to OA

14.00 - 14.20 The subject-specific IR: UALRO (Stephanie Meece, University of the Arts London)
14.20 - 14.40 A repository for teaching: HumBOX (Kate Borthwick)
14.40 - 15.00 The overlay journal: SAS Open Journals (Dr Peter Webster)
15.00 - 15.20 An OA publisher on campus: Ubiquity Press, UCL (Brian Hole)
15.20 - 16.00 Discussion

16.00 Closing comments
16.10 Departures

New JISC open journal project

I'm delighted to be able to announce that the JISC have very generously funded us to create an overlay journal interface for SAS-Space.

We'll be creating an overlay journal system based on SAS-Space, with Amicus Curiae as the initial example, using the open source Open Journal Systems. This system will then be made available, at minimal cost, to both other existing and new journals produced within the School, and to publications by cognate learned societies. Such a system will greatly increase open access publishing capacity in the humanities and social sciences, and further fulfil the School’s remit from HEFCE for research promotion and facilitation.

More details on the project blog.

Carmen in Paris

SAS-Space now holds a collection of reviews from the opening nights of Bizet's Carmen at the Paris Opéra Comique, part of the Francophone Music Criticism project, hosted by the Institute of Musical Research.

The collection is based on Lesley Wright's’s Georges Bizet, 'Carmen' - dossier de presse parisienne (1875), 'Critiques de l’Opéra français du XIXe siècle’ 13 (Weinsberg: Lucie Galland, 2001). It was prepared by Isabella Yeager (Smith College) under the direction of Mark Everist (University of Southampton) and was supported by a SAS Dean's Development Fund award. The directors of the network are grateful to Lesley Wright and Karl Leich-Galland for agreement to reproduce parts of this publication.

Reflecting on digital projects at SAS

SAS-Space hosts a growing collection of materials reflecting on digital projects around the School. They touch on issues such as peer review for digital resources, collaborative editing, sustainability, impact and the experience of creating online resources. See them all here

New legal scholarship from Amicus Curiae

Several items from the summer 2010 issue of Amicus Curiae, the journal of Institute of Advanced Legal Studies / Society for Advanced Legal Studies, are now live. They cover topics as diverse as war crimes trials, insurance law and the place of religious 'irrationality' in relation to the law. View the whole collection here.

The music criticism of Joseph d'Ortigue

Editions of a further 100 articles have been added to this collection, bringing the total to over 300 (around half the intended number). Joseph d'Ortigue was one of the most prolific and wide-ranging music critics in Paris during the mid-nineteenth century. He had strong views on opera, was closely involved in debates about Catholic church music, and had a keen interest in the music of the past. All these concerns come through in the latest batch of files, written for a weekly music periodical, Le ménestrel [The Minstrel] run by the Paris publishing house Heugel. View the collection in SAS-Space.

The London Stock Exchange: an oral history

New on SAS-Space is a growing collection of transcripts and recordings of interviews with stock jobbers from the Stock Exchange. The interviews were produced as part of an oral history project at the Centre for Metropolitan History (Institute of Historical Research.) See them all at the collection homepage.