Mimas experts are placing their feet firmly back on the ground after several months of international travel and talks. A key part of our digital information work requires in-depth engagement with our colleagues overseas. Highlights from the last few months include presentations and workshops in Australia, Greece and South Korea. We think it's important to discuss this work and debate its implications for the rapidly evolving information landscape.

Enabling 'global discovery' in Australia

Vic Lyte travelled to Canberra, Australia in early November to collaborate with Global Registries Initiative partners in a workshop at the Australian National University (05–06 Nov 2009). Representing JISC's Information Environment Service Registry (IESR) (based at Mimas), Vic joined international colleagues to consider how to make scholarly information more discoverable and useful to the international research community.

This can be achieved by developing a coordinated international mesh of collection and service registries, as Vic explains:

"This is something that IESR is already achieving on a UK level, but the challenge is to balance local and national requirements against global scope – research is increasingly cross-boundary, after all, and we need to enable people online to move as seamlessly across those boundaries as possible."

The group made solid progress on this ambitious initiative, agreeing that the UK's IESR was the appropriate model for carrying forward the work of the Global Registries Initiative.

Vic commented enthusiastically:

"It is very rewarding when our work in the UK is recognised in this way.

"We play a critical role in leading the way for international standards for information discovery, and by learning from others we can refine and improve what we do here for the UK."

Vic's presentation slides are available to view on SlideShare.

Unpicking 'personalisation paradoxes' in Greece

In Corfu, Greece this October, for the European Conference on Digital Libraries, Mimas convened a discussion panel Personalisation and Network Effects – Unpicking the Paradoxes, in which Caroline Williams and Joy Palmer were joined by Paul Walk (UKOLN), David Sero (Sero Consulting) and Bill Hart-Davidson (Michigan State University).

This was an opportunity to discuss how libraries and archives might more effectively exploit social technologies to create new, richer user experiences. The debate centred on the challenges and opportunities of user-generated content and social filtering of content, as well as the role of adaptive technologies that can leverage attention data to provide 'personalised' online experiences.

Joy Palmer commented that the session represented a broad range of perspectives, which "very much spilled out into other discussions and sessions". She went on to explain in more detail:

"This is a complex but hugely topical issue – it's what we're all considering right now in the field. As a group, we really benefited from having the opportunity to talk and reflect over a few days in a relatively confined space – there was much heated debate in the hotel foyer!

"We've continued the discussions back here in the UK and are hatching plans for further collaboration."

Paul Walk's slides are available to view on SlideShare.

Debating 'global progress' in South Korea

Representing ESDS International, Mimas' Celia Russell and Paul Murphy travelled to Busan, Korea in early October 2009 for the 3rd OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy.

The conference, organised in collaboration with the European Commission, the United Nations (UN) and World Bank, addressed how statistical data and indicators can help researchers better understand global issues of societal progress.

ESDS international is a critical service for this research, and the team works in partnership with the OECD, World Bank, UN and other intergovernmental organisations to disseminate quality international aggregate datasets to the UK academic community.

On the event and its impact, Celia Russell says:

"There's a fundamental shift going on in the way we measure country progress. We have a growing consensus for the need to develop a more comprehensive view of progress – one that takes into account social, environmental and economic concerns.

"Mimas, through ESDS International, is part of this huge global effort. The OECD World Forum brought together over 2,000 people involved in that process, uniting the critical mass required to develop these ideas into real future international data infrastructures. I see busy and exciting times ahead!"

The OECD recently published Celia and Paul's investigative work as a background paper to the conference: What do academics want? Research requirements for cross-national data.

Keeping conversations going

The current economic climate means that we're all looking more carefully at the costs behind international travel. Fortunately, the nature of our work means we can readily engage internationally through a wealth of other mechanisms available to us, from speaking to our collaborators via our Access Grid facilities, to working together in online collaborative environments.

We strongly believe that if we're to continue to adapt for the future, then engaging with our international colleagues remains critical – our travels and conversations will continue in 2010.