Formerly known as The United Kingdom Office for Library and Information Networking, UKOLN is a centre of expertise in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information, education and cultural heritage communities. UKOLN is based at the University of Bath

University of Bath

The University of Bath is a campus university located in Bath, United Kingdom. It received its Royal Charter in 1966....

 and is funded by the JISC as well as project funding from JISC and the European Union

European Union

The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

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History

UKOLN was established in 1989, although the organisation traces its roots back to 1977 with the foundation, by the British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

, of the Centre for Catalogue Research. Between 1994 and 2000, the Director of UKOLN was Lorcan Dempsey

Lorcan Dempsey

Lorcan Dempsey is the Vice President and Chief Strategist of the Online Computer Library Center .He is a native of Dublin, Ireland, where he worked for some years in public libraries. He writes and talks about libraries and networked information...

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Work

UKOLN's main work is:

• influencing policy and informing practice
• promoting community-building and consensus making by actively raising awareness
• advancing knowledge through research and development
• building innovative systems and services based on Web technologies
• acting as an agent for knowledge transfer.

Its specialist areas include metadata and interoperability. It also publishes the Ariadne (Web magazine)

Ariadne (web magazine)

Ariadne is a web magazine published by UKOLN every three months. It is aimed primarily at information professionals working in academia, archives, libraries and museums...

, targeted principally at information science

Information science

-Introduction:Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information...

 professionals in academia, archives, libraries and museums. UKOLN also organises many events, including the annual Institutional Web Management Workshop

IWMW

Institutional Web Management Workshop is a series of workshop events organised by UKOLN to provide professional development for web managers, policy makers, developers, designers and information professionals related to the UK's higher and further education communities.The workshops aim to...

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