Graphics Co-ordinator's Report
Funding News
AGOCG have funding from The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) for
their activities for the year starting 1 August 1996. We have also received
a grant from the JISC Technology Applications Programme (JTAP) to run some
supporting studies for that Programme. The two main themes we will be taking
up are first, virtual environments (see the June 1996 Graphics & Visualisation
Newsletter for the sort of projects we hope to commission) and second, the
issues relating to convergence of computing and audio visual services. We
will be looking to commission case studies of good practice for the second
theme and to evaluate systems for different types of lecture room set up.
Any views on this would be welcome.
Explorer Training Materials
We have commissioned the School of Computer Studies at the University of
Leeds to convert their on-line training materials for Explorer for use across
the World Wide Web.
Supporting the Teachers
At a recent workshop we considered the resource needs of the teachers of
computer graphics, multimedia, visualization and virtual environments. A
report giving the main issues and recommendations is given in this issue.
Knowledge Gallery
The "Knowledge Gallery" was launched on 2 May 1996 as a joint
initiative between Higher Education (HE) and the private sector.
It is concerned with access to collections of distributed images and the
initiative is timely given the recent JISC report on this topic.
I have been asked by the Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFCs)/JISC
to push forward this activity for HE pending the appointment of someone
full time. I will be part of a task force to lead this in the initial stages.
In order to play this role I need briefing on collections available in the
community and elsewhere, collections we might purchase, information on indexing
and metadata relating to images and any other relevant information. We are
also likely to consider digitising collections which are not currently available
in digital form.
I want to see "image" defined in a very broad sense and relating
to collections of raster images, vector images, movies, 3D models.
So, please send me any relevant references, URLs, reports etc.
Graphics Supporters Event
This year's event is to be on the topic of visualization and to assist those
supporting computer graphics and visualization to understand the systems
around. Most likely dates at the time of writing are 17 and 18 September
1996 at the University of Manchester. Full details will be sent out on e-mail.
Anne Mumford
a.m.mumford@1boro.ac.uk
