JISC Historic Books Advisory Board

Chaired by Gabriel Egan, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at De Montford University, the JISC Historic Books (JHB) Advisory Board agreed its terms of reference at its second meeting in January 2012. Full of enthusiastic members, each with their own area of expertise, the board has decided to take a pioneering and collaborative approach in driving forward the future of JISC Historic Books. This is reflected in their terms of reference (below) and in their meeting discussions.

Terms of Reference

The JISC Historic Books Advisory Board works to support the following principles:

  • JHB will be an easy to use, comprehensive, dynamic, innovative and sustainable platform that is continually used by researchers, teachers and learners in UK higher and further education
  • JHB will pioneer new technologies and techniques to support changes in the scholarly environment and user behavior
  • JHB will open up and widen access to historical printed materials through partnerships and international collaborations

In meeting the principles, the Advisory Board’s objectives are to:

  • ensure that JHB provides the leading interface, functionality, content and licensing to meet the needs of teachers, learners and researchers in UK Higher and Further education, both now and in the future
  • drive forward new developments to keep JHB in line with changing user behavior and needs, the changing scholarly environment, and innovations in technology and learning
  • identify and prioritise content for inclusion in JHB to increase repeat use and provide a better teaching, learning and research experience for users within UK higher and further education institutions
  • ensure that JHB adopts current and emerging industry standards/technologies for interoperability, discoverability, accessibility, statistics, metadata and content
  • make decisions that will provide the UK HE & FE community with the best return on investment and support the future sustainability of JISC eCollections

To meet the objectives, the Advisory Board’s role is to:

  • represent the current and potential users of JHB within the UK scholarly community
  • guide and develop the JHB technology and content strategy
  • hold open, frank and constructive discussions on future developments
  • provide advice and guidance to JISC Collections
  • work collaboratively with JISC Collections to help foster  new and constructive relationships / partnerships within the scholarly community
  • champion JHB within UK HE and FE to help harness the power of the community in future developments
  • keep informed of developments in the digital historical printed materials and the scholarly environment and use this knowledge in decision making and when providing advice to JISC Collections