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The Materials Research School, in conjunction with the Centre for Engineering and Design Education, at Loughborough University developed an ‘Equipment Database’ in 2008. An online catalogue of laboratory equipment, workshop machines and specialist tools. Accessible to any member of staff or student to search for an item to borrow, book out or hire for teaching or research use.
In March 2011, Loughborough University received JISC funding to develop the equipment database as an open source system. The project made significant enhancements to the system with the intention of providing the public views of the website (for other institutions or companies to use) as well as linked data for other web services to exploit.
In December 2011, the whole enhanced application, ‘Kit-catalogue’, has been made available as Open Source software for any institution or company to install.
By using the open source ‘Kit-Catalogue’ system within their own institutions, organisations will be able to work towards more efficiency, utilising the assets already in existence and lessening the need for duplication of material assets to become a more sustainable campus.
The project team works closely with end-users in the following activities:
The potential for UK HEIs, of having many institutions using this way of making their equipment more discoverable both internally and externally, will have cost saving and sustainability benefits for all, as well as raising the profile and maximising exploitation of research assets of UK HEIs internationally.
For example, once implemented at many UK HEIs, an end user either from higher education or industry, could use a third party service to search for a specific piece of equipment (e.g. a bench-top gas chromatography system) to hire or use within a certain postcode.
The Kit-Catalogue is written in PHP using a MySQL database. Although categories for equipment can be added on the fly by administrators of each installation, Kit-Catalogue also uses the European standard for describing equipment – CPV codes (Common Procurement Vocabulary).
The Kit-Catalogue project is current and active. Developments are ongoing and a roadmap for features and new functionality is being developed based on conversations with potential adopters. For example, a straightforward but accessible web service to query the data will be provided e.g. utilising simple query string parameters and JSON. It is then anticipated that future developments would layer on more sophisticated functionality to provide a SPARQL endpoint to enable access to the open semantic RDF data.
In May 2011 the Research Councils introduced changes in how equipment is funded on grants. The changes were made in response to the Wakeham Review – which highlighted the need for increased efficiency in research funding – and in response to the reduction in capital budgets by 50 per cent across the Research Councils. The guidelines published by the Research Councils emphasised the need for a greater usage of existing capital assets.
To promote and facilitate this core requirement for equipment sharing both within and across institutions, the Research Councils have mandated that the sector validates data sets of research equipment and facilities to enable the required procurement efficiencies as well promoting the sharing of equipment across institutions. The aim is to gain the best possible value from existing capital investments, avoiding needless duplication of equipment and responding to the Research Council’s priority of demonstrating steps to improve the utilisation of capital investments.
As a response to this, the Kit-Catalogue™ team at Loughborough is a partner in an EPSRC funded collaborative project with the Universities of Southampton, Bath and Leeds. The project brings together a partnership of four universities with access to, and representing, regional consortia comprising of 22 universities. The aim is to research and propose guidelines and technical standards, harmonising vocabulary and schema in use across the sector, to enable the development of solutions to be used in the cataloguing and publishing of research facilities and equipment on a national scale. This project is due to start in July with a national conference planned in the Autumn. The Kit-Catalogue™ system will be piloting and ultimately implementing the national agreed taxonomy and standards for describing and sharing data about equipment and facilities in UK HE.
The potential for UK HEIs, of having many institutions using this way of making their equipment more discoverable both internally and externally, will have cost saving and sustainability benefits for all, as well as raising the profile and maximising exploitation of research assets of UK HEIs internationally. For example, once implemented at many UK HEIs, an end user either from higher education or industry, could use a third party service to search for a specific piece of equipment (e.g. a bench-top gas chromatography system) to hire or use within a certain postcode.