Publishing Deal Brings Hope of 50 Jobs
AROUND 50 jobs - with the prospect of more in the future - will be created in the Western Isles over the next two years for teleworkers. This follows the conclusion - after six months of talks - of a major deal which will see some of the most advanced scientific research in the world assembled electronically in the islands.
Benbecula-based information technology company Lasair has signed a series of contracts with the Oxford University Press to prepare material for printed and electronic publication by the OUP.
The project will mean work for around 50 people spread across Lewis, Harris, the Uists and Barra and comes at a time when investment in training local people in IT skills is being increased and efforts are being stepped up to attract a major electronics or communications company to the new Gleann Seileach Business Park in Stornoway.
In addition to working on scientific material, Lasair will provide services for other OUP publications including ornithological and technical manuals.
Lasair, a private enterprise company, was set up 18 months ago with backing from development agency Western Isles Enterprise and Western Isles Council in order to provide a mechanism by which teleworkers could enter into contracts.
At the announcement of the contract in Stornoway on Monday, Mr John Manger, managing director of science, medical and journals division of Oxford University Press, said his company was delighted to have found a group of highly skilled outworkers who could cope with large quantities of technical and editorial work. He said making the deal without Lasair would have been impossible as there was no other way of drawing a scattered collection of homeworkers together.
Lasair has just completed a major contract to provide a database for the Metropolitan Police's forensic science laboratories and has also helped turn 100 years of the Scottish Law Times into digital format. There is also a continuing contract with an American firm, now in its third year, for putting material from newspapers and magazines on to an electronic database.
Lasair was helped to secure the OUP deal by the Western Isles ICT Advisory Service, a joint project to develop jobs and skills in information technology set up by Western Isles Enterprise and Western Isles Council and the local LEADER programme.
Mr Donnie Morrison of the advisory service, who chaired the press conference announcing the new deal, said that 70 jobs had already been created on the Islands by work on information technology projects. Teleworking was ideally suited to the Islands.
Money for training related to the new project has come from the local European LEADER programme which is putting in £20,168 - with an additional £6,722 from WIE - to provide Lasair with teleworker training. Carola Bell, who heads the LEADER programme, said the aim was to get local people trained so they could train others in the skills needed, rather than flying in trainers temporarily from outside every time a new contract began.
Initially the new work will be offered to established teleworkers contracted to Lasair - eight of the 50 jobs are replacements for ones related to earlier completed contracts. Around half the total number of people required for the work have been identified and the first ones are expected to start work in the next two to three weeks.
Lasair director Kathleen Turner said the deal with OUP would provide opportunities for local employment of skilled, suitably qualified people who otherwise would have had to go further afield to find some other work.
Mr Manger said the OUP was getting into electronic publishing in the same way as other publishing companies although it was impossible to make money at present by publishing on the Internet. In addition there was work producing CD-ROMs of existing books. One of the projects which the Lasair contract involves will be the production of a CD-ROM of a nine-volume book on the birds of Europe, North America and Asia.
He said that this transferring work was far from simple - when the the Oxford English Dictionary was put on to CD-ROM it was realised that the original text was full of errors which the computer spotted. When the catalogue of the Bodleian Library in Oxford was put on to CD-ROM, around 40 per cent of one of the most highly regarded texts of its kind was found to be junk. The work that the Lasair contract involved would involve creating a high-quality final product, not just transferring data.
Lasair has 25 people working full time and 18 part-time but around 300 people have registered an interest in work on IT projects with the firm. It has two people at its Benbecula head office, but this will soon be increased by an additional person on work relating to the genealogical data-base being created for Northton, Harris, and by new clerical staff.
Original article Stornoway Gazette Jan 24 1997.
