Digimap and Licence Numbers

ecls/ / Digimap News

I’ve been asked to provide my institution’s “Digimap Licence Number”. Where do I find this?

There is no such thing as a “Digimap Licence Number”. If you need a specific licence number, we would suggest the OS Educational Copyright Licence number is the most appropriate one to use.

This licence is arranged directly between the institution and Ordnance Survey and therefore doesn’t relate to Digimap specifically. Institutions can hold an OS Educational Copyright Licence without having a subscription to Digimap, although the licence is required in order to take out a subscription to Digimap.

A copy of the licence (on which you will find the licence number) is held by your institution and the licence number is submitted with your institution’s Digimap subscription forms, which are sent to JISC Collection’s subscription agent. Ordnance Survey will also have a record of it.

Service maintenance – registration delay

ecls/ / Access, Service Availability

EDINA is undertaking some service maintenance on Tuesday 26 May, as previously advertised.

If you are registering for Digimap between 5pm on Monday 25 May and 9am on Wednesday 27 May 2009, your registration will not be processed until the evening of Wednesday 27 May 2009.

This means you will not be able to access Digimap until the morning of 28 May 2009. Applications received on Wednesday 27 May will be processed as usual that night.

EDINA is undertaking significant work on the databases underlying Digimap, and as a result, registration applications will be collected but not processed while this work takes place.

Reminder: Digimap Training in June

ecls/ / Training & Events

EDINA would like to remind you that booking is now open and there are spaces available on the following Digimap training courses, which are open to staff members in UK higher and further education institutions:

  • Digimap Essentials 4 June 2009, Bilborough College, Nottingham
  • Digimap Collections Training 9-11 June 2009, Exeter University

You will find more details of course content and booking forms on EDINA’s Training and Events page. If you are uncertain about the relevance of a course for your needs, please contact EDINA for advice at edina-training@ed.ac.uk.

All EDINA training courses are free of charge and lunch is provided. Regretfully, however, we will charge £25.00 for each day of absence from a course without giving us advance notice.

Supporting you remotely

ecls/ / Training & Events

EDINA’s User Support team has recently delivered some short online workshops about elements of various EDINA services, including Digimap, using a web conferencing service called Instant Presenter. In order to join in with online training, you just need a web browser and a set of headphones.

We plan to develop a fuller programme of such online workshops in the next academic year. Although our initial aim is to deliver these workshops to staff in order to allow them to support users, in time we may open the workshops to students too. You can subscribe to our Training and Events feed so you can be the first to know about forthcoming training dates.

We would really like to hear from you about your requirements. Are there particular elements of our services on which you need more information? Do you have any particular topics of interest?

Ad-hoc online workshops can also be arranged at a time that suits you, so if you need support, please ask! You can contact us via the EDINA Helpdesk or you can call our Training Officer, Vivienne Carr, on 0131 651 1852.

Updated Digimap Training Materials

ecls/ / Training & Events

We have recently updated all the training materials available via the Site Representative Support Area within Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection. To access these materials, log in to Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection and click on the the Site Representative Support Area link in the left menu panel. Once in the Site Representative Support Area use the index on the left to click first on the Training Materials item, then the Download Materials item.

You are free to take any of the documents to either brush up your own Digimap knowledge and skills or to pass these on to others. Materials can also be downloaded from the EDINA website without logging in to Digimap.

As always Site Representatives are encouraged to use these training materials to run their own local courses on Digimap, both for other staff and for students.

For details of scheduled courses run by EDINA, please visit our Training and Events page. Details of our new online training sessions are also available from here.

FAQs about Change-only Update

ecls/ / Data Changes & Additions, Help

Why does my Order say that CoU is not available?

Check the date on which you created the original Order. If you created it after the last set of CoU was released but before the next set of CoU is released, then you already have the latest version of the data. If a release of CoU is imminent, you should wait until after the release date, and then check your data order for the availability of CoU.

I have downloaded CoU for my area, but having applied it to my existing data holding, nothing looks different. Why is this?

Not every feature changes every time a Change-only Update is released. It may be that none of the features in your data holding have been updated this time. It is not possible for EDINA to determine exactly whose orders contain changed features.

You may also find that there are some small changes to the attributes for your data. These are harder to identify if you are simply looking for changes visible on a map. It isn’t necessarily the geometry or position of a feature which has changed. When you plot the changes on a map, you may not see them, because the changes may relate to data in the attribue table.

Why can’t I have CoU for other datasets?

Only OS MasterMap data offers Change-only Update. This is because other datasets are not structured in a way which enables CoU to be identified and extracted separately. Other datasets are also not updated so frequently.

Service maintenance – 26 May 2009

ecls/ / Service Availability

EDINA will be making use of the advertised ‘at risk’ period on Tuesday 26 May 2009, in order to carry out essential database updates. All Digimap Collections will be unavailable between 17.30 and 20.00 on this day.

EDINA will endeavour to restore full access to all facilities as soon as possible, but given that it is not possible to predict exactly how long the task in hand will take, you should anticipate that the service will be unavailable for the full period advertised above. Notices to this effect will be posted on the Digimap login page.

Emails sent in error

ecls/ / Access

On Tuesday 21 April, some Digimap users may have received email from EDINA entitled “Activating os registration”.

These emails were sent in error and have no bearing on the status of a user’s Digimap registration. Please ignore the email and accept EDINA’s apologies for any confusion caused.

Ordnance Survey Licence Agreement Renewal

ecls/ / Access, Digimap News

Lorraine Estelle, CEO of JISC Collections, has issued the following as an email to all institutions subscribing to Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection. EDINA will also be distributing this information to site representatives and other support staff.

The current Ordnance Survey Licence Agreement for Digimap ends on 31st July 2009. Ordnance Survey and JISC Collections are working on the renewal of licence which will cover the period from 1st August 2009 to 31st July 2014.

Although the new Licence Agreement is not yet available from the JISC Collections’ website, the subscription fees for first year of the new Agreement from 1st August 2009 to 31st July 2010 are confirmed: in light of the current economic situation the subscription fees for this period will remain at the current level, with no retail price index increase.

JISC Collections will be consulting with users about a new subscription model from 1st August 2010, which it hopes will enable more institutions to afford the other datasets available from the Digimap Collections: Historic Digimap, Marine Digimap and Geology Digimap. The consultation will commence in the autumn of this year.

Given that the pricing model for 1st August 2010 to 31st July 2014 is uncertain until the consultation is complete, institutions signing the new Licence Agreement for 1st August 2009 31st July 2014, may opt-out at 31st July 2010 if they need to.

Digimap Essential Maintenance: 7 14 April 2009

ecls/ / Service Availability

On Tuesday 7 April 2009, EDINA will be undertaking essential maintenance on the servers which run Digimap. In order to minimise disruption to the service, there will be two short periods of downtime on this day (rather than a single long period of downtime).

These periods of downtime will be between 08:00 – 08:45 AND 17:30 – 20:00. All Digimap Collections will be unavailable during these times.

EDINA will also be making use of the normal ‘at risk’ period on Tuesday 14 April 2009, to carry out further essential maintenance. All Digimap Collections will be unavailable between 17:30 and 18:30. We will endeavour to restore full access to all services as soon as possible, but given that it is not possible to predict exactly how long the task in hand will take, you should anticipate that the service will be unavailable for the full periods stated above. Notices to this effect will be posted on the Digimap login page and a reminder will be sent to site representatives.