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USC Library receives funding to expand e-research
6 October, 2005
Research in regional universities has been given a A$5 million
boost through the Regional Universities Building Research
Infrastructure Collaboratively (RUBIC) Project which will develop
better research infrastructure into digital repositories.
Regional communities will benefit from having improved access to
recent research papers using improved search engines and the latest
application software.
No longer will important research data be available only from
larger city-based institutions.
The University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) is pooling financial and
personnel resources with the University of Southern Queensland,
University of New England, the University of Newcastle, Massey
University and sourcing input from the New Zealand Ministry of
Education to conduct a Federal Government backed project to develop
new processes and tools to create sustainable research
infrastructure in regional universities in the areas of e-research
and e-learning.
This project is one of nine to be announced in the second round
of funding (known as the Managed Environments for Research
Repository Infrastructure or MERRI Projects) which come under the
Department of Education, Science and Training's (DEST) Systemic
Infrastructure Initiative.
This initiative is providing more than A$20 million to upgrade
research infrastructure in Australian universities.
Building on the best practice developed from the first round of
projects (known as the Federated Repositories of Online Digital
Objects or FRODO projects), the University of Southern Queensland
led RUBRIC Project will develop infrastructure and capability
across 13 other universities in both Australia and New Zealand to
develop similar institutional repositories to maximise access to
digital research resources.
USC Executive Director, Information Services, and member of the
RUBRIC Project Board Heather Gordon, said the project is an
exciting development for the University and Library staff and will
improve access to the work of USC researchers, the Research
Institutes and Centres and possibly for currently inaccessible
regional primary research materials such as historic photos,
artefacts and data from the HMAS Brisbane.
"USC Library staff have been working towards the provision of a
digital repository starting in 1997/98 with the USC Theses
project," Ms Gordon said.
"The project was established to provide access to digital
full-text versions of theses produced by USC research postgraduate
students from the Library catalogue accessible on the Internet.
"The RUBIC Project is an opportunity to build on our current
experience and extend into other emerging aspects related to the
development and maintenance of digital repositories for
e-research," she said.
"The project confirms the University's commitment to research,
regional engagement and enhancing relationships with other
education providers and partners for the benefit of the region. It
also strengthens the University's response to the federal Research
Quality Framework, as a general principle of the RQF is that
researchers are able to have seamless access to discover what
research is being conducted, to gain access to that research, and
to collaborate with other researchers.
"The funding and additional expertise that the USC Library will
receive from RUBIC is essential for further and ongoing research
and development into digital repositories."
USC Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Thomas is also delighted to
see USC as a partner in a successful bid for Federal research
infrastructure funds.
RUBRIC will provide a means for the institutions to work in a
structured framework using the latest tools, to act collectively
and to develop the expertise that will be necessary to respond to
emerging needs of the Research Quality and Accessibility Frameworks
across universities.
It will also develop a set of support services to sustain the
collaborative development of distributed research information
networks across regional universities.
The RUBRIC Project will take two years to complete and will
involve staff from a range of diverse areas of expertise including
technical standards experts, information technology officers,
library and metadata specialists, and research active academics
from a variety of disciplines.