The APO website has undergone some improvements lately. These changes include the addition of the My APO button on the home page for quick access to the APO dashboard, a dedicated Advertise page, and a Footer to improve navigation.
The My APO dashboard update applies to all contributors and advertisers who upload content to the site as well as website users employing the bookmarking tool.
Users need to be registered and logged in to access the My APO dashboard. Once they are in the My APO dashboard view, they will have access to all their listings and bookmarks. Users can add new blocks to the dashboard configuration simply by clicking on ‘Add a block’.
Les’ enduring interest is in thesauri, aka taxonomies, aka subject headings – however you put it, Les loves controlled vocabularies! Following management of ScOT (Schools Online Thesaurus), Les now manages vocabularies and implements ontologies (joins the dots) in the policy and research data management domain.
Les Kneebone – APO Information Architect
Les has worked in information management roles in government, school, community and research sectors since 2002. He mainly contributed to managing metadata, taxonomies and cataloguing standards used in these sectors.
Before graduating in Information Management at RMIT, Les gained post-graduate qualifications in Sociology and the History and Philosophy of Science (Queensland University of Technology and and University of Melbourne).
Les is a non-cardigan-wearing librarian and enjoys powerlifting, satirical news and pointing out inappropriate quotation marks in signs.
Broken links have become synonymous with web browsing. There are a number of reasons why and how they occur, most commonly involving a web page being moved without a proper re-direct being put in place or a change to the URL structure of the website the user is trying to reach.
Early in May, Dr Steve McEachern and Janet McDougall from Australian National University (ANU) joined Dr Ahsan Morshed from Swinburne University’s Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, and the APO team to workshop the sharing of information between APO and the Australian Data Archive (ADA).
Lots of exciting opportunities were identified, along with the usual list of challenging issues to overcome to make these ideas become reality.
LSP project kick-off meeting, Mayor’s Room, Hawthorn Town Hall
APO got started on the Linked Semantic Platforms for Policy and Practice (LSP) project on the 6 March, with a kick-off meeting at the Hawthorn Arts Centre in Melbourne.
Funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grant, the LSP project is significant because it aims to revolutionise the way researchers are able to access, and analyse policy documents and data. The main objective of the two-year LSP Project is to develop the next generation of decision-support tools for interdisciplinary research on critical public policy issues.
By applying linked open data, knowledge graphs and collaborations across existing research infrastructure projects, the project will improve interoperability across major social science databases. The ultimate outcome of this project will be the creation of new analytical tools that will transform the research capabilities for evidence-based policy making. The LSP project also aligns closely with the Research Graph pilot project that APO is currently involved with an launching at Research Data Alliance Plenary in Berlin in March. Continue reading “ARC LIEF Linked Semantic Platforms kick-off meeting”
APO has received a $1.4m grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) program to fund the Linked Semantic Platforms (LSP) project over 2018 and 2019. Together with contributions from partner organisations the project has an overall budget of around $2m over two years.
Key elements of the Linked Semantic Platforms project
By using linked open data, knowledge graphs and collaborations across existing research infrastructure projects, the collaborative project aims to develop the next generation of decision-support tools for interdisciplinary research on critical public policy issues.
Expected outcomes include inter-operability across major social science databases and new analytical tools that will transform the research capabilities for evidence-based policy making.
Creative industries add both economic and cultural value to society by generating knowledge, information and artefacts through creative practice and production. With this in mind, APO and University of South Australia (UniSA) have joined forces to launch the new Cultural Policy & Creative Industries Collection.
Resources in the collection focus on work by and about the cultural sector, including galleries, libraries, archives, museums, publishers, film and performing arts organisations, as well as arts funding and advisory bodies.
Image: Loïc Fürhoff (Unsplash)
Additionally, the collection considers the broader creative economy, including advertising, arts, television, music, crafts, fashion, research and development, radio, journalism, games, software, and artistic expression more generally.
‘I would like this resource to be the “go to” reference for key Australian documents on the issue, and on social inclusion and diversity in the Australian cultural and creative industries generally. Reports such as Screen Australia’s Seeing Ourselves: Reflections on Diversity in Australian TV Drama, and Laboratory Adelaide’s and David Throsby’s work on incomes and the working conditions for arts workers will be key here.’
If you have produced research in this area, or know of work we should be considering, please contact Penelope Aitken at APO at paitken@apo.org.au
Watch this space as we share our journey and discoveries through the 
