Updates and Automations
by Christopher Gutteridge
Org Updated
The “Org” dataset has been updated with data provided by our HR department on the new university structure, and the proper codes for everything. Where possible we’re using the two character alpha code (eg. FP for ECS) in the URI, but for the lower levels we’re using the full 10 charater code from the HR database, (eg. F7FP090000 for Web & Internet Science). This provides canonical IDs for all parts of the university, which is nice.
You can view the top levels on the organisation page. However, it now goes much deeper so I’ve added an option to let you view the entire org. tree.
Over the summer we’ve also added data on
- The location of student offices for each Faculty
- The location of the “deanery’ for each Faculty (although these usually are an entire floor, and our system doesn’t really do much with the concept of floors, yet)
- For faculties which have provided the data, a list of the buildings they ‘occupy’ (defined as controlling space in, rather than just having a member in that building). This has been provided by some faculties at the faculty level, and others at the Academic Unit level. We are happy to accept either. If we could complete this dataset it would be a very powerful resource.
- Where we can, we’ve added the homepage for that part of the University. We’ve not done this below the top two levels, but adding the data is very easy if people want it.
The spreadsheet in the get-the-data box on the organisation page is slightly unsual as I’ve set it to collect data we don’t show in the page. In addition to the URIs for the org. element and it’s parent element, and the label, it also includes a field for the code (FP or P2 or F5AF010000) — I figure that might be really useful for admin staff.
Update policy:
- Names of org. elements: This data belongs to HR and corrections should be sent to them. If they accpet it then I’ll update our data (please copy me the acceptance). Later, we’ll automatically source this data direct from their database.
- URLs for org. elements: data.southampton currently own this dataset, so it’s very easy to update. Just send us the correction to opendata@soton.ac.uk — I don’t anticipate much confusion so anyone is welcome to send us these.
- Space Occupied by org. element — This must be sent to us by an official admin for the group, unit or faculty concerned. If it’s a list for lots of org. elements, such as every group in a faculty, please get in tocuh as opendata@soton.ac.uk so we can send you a template spreadsheet to save us having to translate into the codes we use.
EPrints Automated
I should have done this ages ago, but the job got lost down the back of a sofa.
Every Sunday morning the EPrints datasets are now refreshed from the live archives.