Polemicweb Research & Development
Both postgraduates, Polly and Mick have worked in the Higher Education and Cultural Heritage sectors at the cutting-edge of their field, giving conference papers and writing articles on all aspects of managing and delivering digital content.
Under the auspices of Polemicweb they continue to undertake research projects alongside practical resource-building. As experienced researchers and report writers, they would be happy to discuss research needs in all subject areas. See below for some examples of their work:
JISC Digital Media Metadata Advice Papers
Polemciweb has carried out an extensive review and edit of the entire series of JISC Digital Media's advice on metadata standards and use for describing digital multimedia.
JISC Digital Media is an advisory body set up by the JISC to help UK Higher and Further Education embrace and maximise their use of digital media.
IPR Guidelines for Repositories
Polemicweb completed the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) work package of a recent JISC-funded project: KULTUR. The work was commissioned by University for the Creative Arts, University of Southampton and University of the Arts London and it involved researching and reporting upon the rights issues that affect the inclusion of arts content in the growing Institutional Repository environment. The guidelines, reports and primary research material, which are of use to the arts education community and beyond, can be downloaded below:
VADS
Mick and Polly have both directed the Research Centre VADS before leaving to focus on Polemicweb. Some of their achievements at the helm of VADS include:
- Moving it from a publicly funded service to a viable business, by developing a funding strategy and Business Plan
- Overseeing a complete re-branding exercise to launch the newly autonomous service
- Securing VADS' future and establishing it as a University Research Centre
- Securing a number of new national projects in the area of Repository Development, E-learning and Research in museum/education collaborations.
Fineart
Polly managed and developed a ground-breaking art website, fineart.ac.uk, which is a prototype for a national web-based collection of work by staff and students of UK higher education institutions who have made a significant contribution to UK fine art education through practice. It was one of the first such collaborative projects that brought together often competing universities and disparate collections in the electronic domain, to become a unique collection in its own right. At the same time as exploring these new boundaries, the project was also experimental in its use of technologies, using SMIL, Apache Cocoon and also looking at new ways to represent 3D objects online.
Images Application Profile
In addressing a dearth of provision for the exchange of image metadata within Institutional Repositories (IR), Mick and Polly developed an Application Profile for Images which formed part of a group of similar work funded by JISC to provide consensus and meaningful exchange of data across many resource types in UK IRs. (An application profile is a set of metadata elements, policies, and guidelines defined for a particular application, in this case images). Read the article published on the Profile and view the profile itself.
