<font class="Apple-style-span" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><font size="2">[Forwarding from the UK Visual Arts Data Service. --Peter Suber.]<br></font><br></font><div class="gmail_quote"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><br>
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Press Release: <b>VADS receives JISC funding to Kultivate UK
creative and visual arts research</b></font></div><div text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'trebuchet ms', sans-serif"><b><br></b>
PDF available from: <a href="http://www.vads.ac.uk/kultur2group/downloads/20101213_Kultivate_press_release.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.vads.ac.uk/kultur2group/downloads/20101213_Kultivate_press_release.pdf</a><br>
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The Visual Arts Data Service (VADS), a research centre at the
University for the Creative Arts, has been awarded £100,000 by JISC
for the Kultivate project in order to facilitate the transition
towards more open, discoverable and accessible creative and visual
arts research. Kultivate is an important initiative for the arts
community and one which will benefit specialist institutions,
departments within larger multi-disciplinary institutions, and arts
researchers in the UK.<br>
<br>
Building on the highly successful Kultur project, Kultivate will
share and support the application of best practice in the
development of institutional repositories that are appropriate to
the specific needs and behaviours of creative and visual arts
researchers. The project has arisen out of user-needs discussed at
meetings of the Kultur II group which consists of representatives
from 18 institutions and other organisations and growing. This
community will continue to be open to new members, and to share and
embed expertise about arts research deposit across the arts,
repositories, and JISC communities.<br>
<br>
Kultivate will engage the creative arts sector through four
community workshops (January-May 2011), which will explore the
development of a sustainable model for repository development in the
sector and nationally. The project seeks to contribute to, develop,
and embed shared community best deposit practice by engaging
researchers within their own institutions. A sector-led support
framework will be provided where repository enhancements, services
and tools for the open source EPrints repository platform, and
institutional processes, can be promoted, developed and rigorously
tested. Project outputs will be disseminated widely culminating in a
conference at the completion of the project in July 2011.<br>
<br>
The anticipated impact of Kultivate will be to increase the rate of
arts research deposit; to enhance the user experience for
researchers; and to develop and sustain a sector-wide community of
shared best practice in arts research repositories.<br>
<br>
<b>Notes:</b><br>
1. VADS: the online resource for visual arts over 100,000 images
free for educational use. <a href="http://www.vads.ac.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.vads.ac.uk/</a><br>
2. One of Europe’s leading arts and design institutions, the
University for the Creative Arts builds on a proud tradition of
creative arts education spanning 150 years. Our campuses at
Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester are home to more
than 7,000 students from more than 70 countries studying on courses
in art, design, architecture, media and communications. <a href="http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/</a><br>
3. JISC (historically known as the Joint Information Systems
Committee) inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative
use of digital technologies, helping to maintain the UK’s position
as a global leader in education. <a href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.jisc.ac.uk/</a><br>
4. Kultivate has been funded under the Information Environment
Programme: Deposit of research outputs and exposing digital content
for education and research. Strand A: Deposit. <a href="http://www.vads.ac.uk/kultur2group/projects/kultivate/" target="_blank">http://www.vads.ac.uk/kultur2group/projects/kultivate/</a><br>
5. Kultur was a JISC-funded project (2007-2009) which created a
model of an institutional repository for use in the creative and
applied arts. The project partners were the University of
Southampton, University of the Arts London, University for the
Creative Arts, and the Visual Arts Data Service. Leiden University
was an associate partner. <a href="http://kultur.eprints.org/" target="_blank">http://kultur.eprints.org/</a><br>
6. The Kultur II group is a user-led community network consisting of
a number of specialist institutions and departments, which meets
around three times a year to share expertise and best practice in
the area of arts research repositories. <a href="http://www.vads.ac.uk/kultur2group/" target="_blank">http://www.vads.ac.uk/kultur2group/</a><br>
7. In November the Kultur II group included: The Arts University
College Bournemouth, Glasgow School of Art, Goldsmiths University of
London, GUILDHE, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), King's
College University of London, Norwich University College of the
Arts, Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication,
Repositories Support Project (RSP) at the University of Nottingham,
Royal College of Art, Staffordshire University, University College
Falmouth incorporating Dartington College of Arts, University for
the Creative Arts, University of Salford, University of Southampton,
University of the Arts London, University of the West of England,
Visual Arts Data Service (VADS).<br>
8. EPrints is a flexible platform for building repositories for
research literature, scientific data, student theses, project
reports, multimedia artefacts, teaching materials, scholarly
collections, digitised records, exhibitions and performances. <a href="http://www.eprints.org/" target="_blank">http://www.eprints.org/</a><br><font color="#888888">
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<pre cols="72">--
Marie-Therese Gramstadt
Project Manager for Kultivate/VADS Projects Officer
<a href="mailto:mtg@vads.ac.uk" target="_blank">mtg@vads.ac.uk</a>
VADS: the online resource for visual arts
over 100,000 images free for educational use
<a href="http://www.vads.ac.uk" target="_blank">http://www.vads.ac.uk</a></pre>
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