[Forwarding from the UK Visual Arts Data Service. --Peter Suber.]
Press Release: *VADS receives JISC funding to Kultivate UK creative and visual arts research* * * PDF available from: http://www.vads.ac.uk/kultur2group/downloads/20101213_Kultivate_press_release.pdf 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. 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. 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. 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. *Notes:* 1. VADS: the online resource for visual arts over 100,000 images free for educational use. http://www.vads.ac.uk/ 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. http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/ 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. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/ 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. http://www.vads.ac.uk/kultur2group/projects/kultivate/ 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. http://kultur.eprints.org/ 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. http://www.vads.ac.uk/kultur2group/ 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). 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. http://www.eprints.org/ -- Marie-Therese Gramstadt Project Manager for Kultivate/VADS Projects officer...@vads.ac.uk VADS: the online resource for visual arts over 100,000 images free for educational usehttp://www.vads.ac.uk
