The Welsh Assembly Government has pledged funding for a £400m university science campus in Swansea.
Supporters of the Bay Science and Innovation Campus, which will be built on a 69-acre site off Fabian Way, say it could create thousands of jobs and put more than £3bn into the regional economy over 10 years.
Among the issues faced by UK universities and colleges, the carbon emissions from their ICT loom large. One cause of the growth in these emissions is demand for computing and in particular the ever-growing demand for data storage and data centres.
One way of tackling this demand has been explored by a JISC-funded project at Cardiff University.
The team at Cardiff’s Information Services Directorate have been studying ways of storing computer files that can reduce the amount of energy used by computers for storage by over 80%.
Dubbed Planet Filestore, the project has developed an approach to storing data on disks with different energy consumption depending on the frequency with which the data is accessed. Data which is not used very often is moved to a disk which uses less power, thus saving electricity and money while still allowing users near instant access.
When put into full production at Cardiff University, it is anticipated that this will save the university 87600KW.h (or approximately 51 tonnes of CO2) per year which, at current prices, would cost around £10,000 per annum. These savings are likely to increase significantly with escalating storage requirements and energy costs. Environmental savings are also likely to be made in terms of space occupied, procurement, shipping, disposal and hazardous waste reduction.
Rob Bristow, JISC Programme Manager, said: “The approach piloted by Cardiff Information Services has the potential to make a real difference to the carbon footprint of universities if it is adopted across the sector. The more than £100 million that electricity for ICT costs the sector every year is likely to rise in the future and initiatives like this can make a real difference”.
The project has intentionally used techniques and technologies that will easily transfer to a wide range of corporate systems across the world, including those in education, research, public bodies and commercial companies.
Project leader Paul Rock said: “The greatest benefit will be felt if many more organisations were to use this kind of approach to minimise the energy footprint of their filestore. This would mean that the electricity and carbon savings arising from this project would scale dramatically”.
To help make this approach more widely available, JISC is funding Cardiff University Information Services to develop a web-based tool that universities and colleges can use to model the benefits of different scenarios of file storage in terms of environmental and economic savings.
Download the report and recommendations here:
Posted in technology, Welsh universities
Tagged Cardiff, green, ICT, sustainability, technology
This two-part report takes in-depth look at how researchers in the UK use electronic journals, the value they bring to universities and research institutions and the contribution they make to research productivity, quality and outcomes.
http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/e-journals-their-use-value-and-impact
9th March 2011
The changing face of library catalogues: new OPAC developments
Aberystwyth University
To focus on implementation and user perspective.
Presentations will include: Encore (Bangor University), Primo (Aberystwyth University), Meta Lib (Glamorgan University), VuFind (Swansea University) and WorldCat Local at Trinity St David University.
4th May 2011
Reaching out to our users – enhancing library communication using technology
UC&R Wales AGM at Cardiff University.
To include Virtual Librarian project (chat reference service) from Cardiff University; QuestionPoint from the National Library of Wales; Text Tools from Trinity St David University and Aberystwyth University – remote assistance for students from the library.
More details will be available soon.
For further information, contact: Elizabeth Kensler Rheolwr Gwasanaethau Cwsmeriaid / Customer Services Manager Adran Gwasanaethau’r Llyfrgell / Library Services Division Gwasanaethau Gwybodaeth / Information Services Prifysgol Aberystwyth University Aberystwyth SY23 3DZ Tel : 01970 621848 Email: eak@aber.ac.uk
Posted in events, workforce development
Tagged catalogues, events, shared services, UC&R, workforce development
A videoconferenced event at Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff and Swansea Universities.
Wednesday 2 February 2011.
Videoconferencing is a technology whose time has come. This unique event will combine local and videoconferenced presentations, discussions and research. It will present the reasons why you need to get the most from your videoconferencing facilities – and how to do so.
It will highlight the ways in which videoconferencing can help meet the current environmental and financial challenges faced by education and the public sector. Who should videoconference? When should videoconferencing replace travel? When is travel more appropriate? How to get people using the facilities? How much money, time and CO2 emissions can be saved? What are the benefits to staff and the organisation?
This event is organised by the Welsh Video Network and has a focus on Higher and Further Education in Wales, but will be of interest to the whole public sector.
More information and booking from http://www.wvn.ac.uk/vfactorreg
If you are interested in what Open Source software solutions are available to libraries, how they work, and the issues and strategies around their use, then this free event in Edinburgh on the 25th and 26th January may be of interest.
‘Open Edge’ is a two day event on open source software for libraries being run in collaboration with JISC and SCONUL. The first day is ’Haggis and Mash’, is a ‘Mashed Library event’ and will take a very hands-on approach, while the second day covers broader issues, in particular how capacity might be built to enable open source solutions to flourish in HE and FE Libraries.
You can attend one or both days – full details of the programme are available at http://www.mashedlibrary.com/wiki/index.php?title=Haggis_and_Mash and registration is now open at http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/1114/
