So we’ve just written too fairly cynical blog posts about some of the challenges we’ve encountered producing open data for the university. The other side of the coin is that, other than governments and councils, we’re one of the first organisations in the world to attempt this. We feel it’s really important to share the negative as well as the positive, and to describe our mistakes as well as our sucesses. Being as honest as possible should help other people following a similar route to us.
The other big win is that our senior management have really bought into the idea of Linked & Open data. I got asked recently to produce a slide summarising RDF & LOD for Phil Nelson, one our Pro V.C.s who was giving a talk about equipment lists open data to senior staff from other Russell Group universities.
This year sees the launch of the Open Data Institute, which is being set up primarily by Southampton staff.
Our team has also recently been granted data.ac.uk to create a central point for ac uk data and help create Cool URIs for the sector.
Why am I talking this all up? …because the university management have decided to invest some of the ‘strategic fund’ in creating a full time Linked Open Data specialist post. I believe we’re the first university in the world to have committed to open data to the degree of creating a post. Because of the way it’s funded, it’s a 2 year fixed post. It’s very possible it will become permentent after that, but I don’t want to make promises I might not be able to keep.
I love my job. I started in October 1997 and I’ve still not got bored.
I’ve put more information about this on the data.soton blog.
Location: Highfield Campus
Salary: Ā£27,578 to Ā£33,884
Full Time Fixed Term
Closing Date: Sunday 19 August 2012
Interview Date: To be confirmed
Reference: 146112JF
JobĀ DescriptionĀ andĀ PersonĀ Specification [Word Document] — we will use the person specification to determine who gets the job, I anticipate we may know, or even be friends with, some of the applicants, so judging everybody by the person spec. helps keep it fair.
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