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The JISC has announced that Martyn Harrow, Director of Information Services at Cardiff University, has been appointed as Head of JISC for a fixed term of 9-18 months from 1 February 2012. He succeeds Malcolm Read who retires as Head of JISC in January 2012.

At the same time the British Library has announced that Lynne Brindley will step down as BL CEO at end of July 2012. The BL Board are now seeking her replacement.

Malcolm and Lynne together with Derek Law (ably abetted by Dave Cook) were the motor behind the early successes of the JISC and all have been great supporters of digital preservation over the years. Their successors will have a great inheritance.

It is a busy time of year with very little time to update the blog but a short update on current and future projects for 2011-2013 may of interest:

Economic Evaluation of Research Data Infrastructure – a study for the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK. This is being conducted jointly by Charles Beagrie Ltd with Prof John Houghton of the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies at Victoria University and is looking at the economic impact of the Economic and Social Data Service in the UK. Such studies on the impact of research data services are rare and we have the opportunity to test some experimental approaches. Already we have interesting data and I think this is going to be a very significant study. We are about half-way though – having started mid-July 2011 and will finish in January 2012.

Smart Research Framework (SRF) and Biomedical Research Infrastructure Software Service kit (BRISSkit). We are  junior partners in two of the four Research Data Management projects in the JISC University Modernisation Fund shared services programme. In both we are supporting their work on developing cost/benefit and return on investment  cases. Both are great projects so I would encourage you to take a look. They will complete in the first half of next year.

Research 360 – just starting up at the University of Bath and will run until March 2013. The Project addresses the long-tail of high quality small science characterised by applied research and faculty-industry partnerships. We will contribute to building on and applying the I2S2/KRDS Benefits Toolkit with a focus on faculty research data drivers for the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

DPC Technology Watch Series – work is also progressing  for the five titles in the new DPC Technology Watch Series. I’m really enjoying working  as series editor with William Kilbride at the DPC  and the authors and keeping up to date on cutting-edge developments. Look out for the first release in the New Year (or from December if you are a DPC member).