DELOS Researcher Exchange Programme Provides Useful Experience and Discussion

The DELOS Researcher Exchange Programme for organizations working on joint projects is certainly proving one of the most effective ways to achieve greater integration of the working teams and the practical exchange of both skills and results. To support the implementation of such exchange programmes, DELOS is providing some funding to cover the additional expenses that might be required for these exchanges.
Setting up this sort of exchange, such that a researcher from one project partner institution can work and consult as the guest of another partner institution, is a relatively lightweight business procedurally. Host and guest institutions put together a simple proposal to their cluster leader who evaluates its relevance to the cluster and, if content, forwards it to the Scientific Co-ordinator.
He approves or rejects such proposals within a fortnight and successful proposals are enacted within a month of his approval. One need only look at last year’s proposals which turned into exchanges to see that the programme has seen considerable activity:

Researcher Exchanges in 2004:
Carlo Meghini, CNR ISTI: visited ICS FORTH.
Georgia Koutrika, University of Athens: visited MUSIC.
Enrico Bertini, University of Rome: visited CWI.
Harald Krottmaier, IICM, University of Technology, Graz: visited ETHZ
Giuseppe Amato, CNR ISTI: visited Masaryk University of Brno.
Ludger Bischofs, OFFIS: visited UMIT.
Marco Degemmis, University of Bari: visited Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft IPSI.

One of the researchers involved in last year’s programme was Harald Krottmaier who works at IICM, University of Technology, Graz, Austria. When we asked Harald for his views on his exchange he said, "I've really learned a lot ... and will surely remember this exchange for a long time!" Harald, who was able to organize his time with Professor Hans Schek at ETHZ, Switzerland, around existing lecturing commitments, looked into issues regarding services (Digital Library Architecture Cluster) and metadata (since IICM colleagues were working on creating a survey of metadata in the context of digital libraries), with particular reference to describing services and making services available to users.
Harald said,“Professor Schek and his team naturally had a great deal to do themselves but they nonetheless provided me with the infrastructure and support for me to carry out useful and instructive work. I greatly valued the opportunity to discuss matters such as OSIRIS with colleagues at ETHZ and I even managed to squeeze in a little sight-seeing!"
Another successful exchange was reported by Markus Franke, winner of the Young Researcher Award awarded by DELOS at ECDL 2004 at the University of Bath.
Markus spent nearly a month at the Ionian University in Athens with Sarantos Kapidakis and his colleagues testing the applicability of a restricted random walk based clustering method on library search terms.

Markus Franke receiving the Young Researcher Award
from Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN, at ECDL 2004

The Newsletter asked Markus for his reactions to his stay. Markus said, “The work has been very productive, and the ideas that we developed represent not only a promising basis for further cooperation but will be something I most definitely wish to continue with back home in Germany. The four weeks at the Ionian University proved a very interesting and invaluable experience. We found a new application for the RRW algorithm that is relevant for electronic reference systems and we established contacts for further common research. I would like to thank the DELOS Network of Excellence for funding this stay and providing me with such a welcome opportunity. Equally, my gratitude goes to Professor Sarantos Kapidakis for hosting my stay as well as for the many stimulating discussions we had during the exchange. And from a personal standpoint, I really appreciated the hospitality and kindness extended to me by all my colleagues in both Corfu and Athens who made my stay such an unforgettable experience."
To get a perspective from a hosting organization, the DELOS Newsletter contacted Professor Sarantos Kapidakis for his views on the Exchange between the University of Karlsruhe and the Ionian University. Sarantos sent us his reaction: "Markus Franke's exchange was a very useful experience for the Laboratory on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing of the Ionian University. When I first invited Markus to the Archive and Library Sciences Department, I was slightly hesitant and not entirely sure what the outcome of the exchange would be: like everywhere else, everyone had his or her normal workload, and we had no spare infrastructural support we could offer. But in such circumstances there is always room for one more person if we try. Markus' activity here and the interesting discussions we had helped us to see some problems, and approaches to their solution, from a different perspective, and to recognize their similarity to other cases. Markus also identified new problems, from different areas, on which it would be appropriate to try his solutions.
The exchange allowed us to bring together differing perspectives across our areas of work which proved to be beneficial to all concerned, and I hope we have more such visits in the future.”
Although the Researcher Exchange Programme is mainly intended to facilitate integration among DELOS members, the DELOS contribution can also be granted in cases where the sending organization is not a DELOS member (the receiving organization has to be a member). Of course, in such instances, the purpose of the visit must be just as relevant to the DELOS Programme of Activities as between two member organizations.
Organizations which are not members of DELOS but which are interested in participating in DELOS activities, either through the Researcher Exchange Programme, or through joint research, are cordially invited to send any proposal to the Chair of the DELOS Scientific Board, Dr. Costantino Thanos

Further information:

DELOS Researcher Exchange Programme

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