Talis Information Limited, the library division of Talis Group Ltd, has been acquired by the UK’s leading outsourcing firm, Capita Group plc. The transaction is valued at £18.5m with an additional £2.5m due, based on performance over the next 12 months. Talis Information Ltd has a range of around 100 academic and public library clients based in the UK and employs 42 staff, all of whom are based in Birmingham, UK.

Talis Group’s other portfolio companies including Talis Education Ltd, Talis Systems Ltd and Talis Inc are unaffected by the acquisition of Talis Information Ltd. Talis Group’s other divisions provide a SaaS-based semantic web platform and related applications including Talis Aspire, a resource list management solution for higher education customers.

Building on the successful series of free Platform and Linked Data Open Days in the past, we are delighted to announce an expanded schedule of events for 2011.

Talis Linked Data Open Days are an ideal introduction to Linked Data and the Semantic Web either as a broad topic or focused on a particular sector.

We are continuing the formula of a relaxed participative format, with opportunities to network lubricated by excellent SPARQL-blend coffee and a free lunch.

The next Linked Data Open Day takes place on 22 March 2011, registration is now open.

There are also a series of Linked Data Specialist Days coming up soon. Keep an eye on our events pages, or subscribe to Talis Platform News for further information, as soon as it becomes available.

Talis is hosting a Linked Data open day at our UK offices in Birmingham. We’ll start at 10:00, and will be introducing Linked Data, SPARQLing, and graph-thinking. We’ll also be having a look at Linked Data in action, and drink plenty of SPARQL-blend coffe. Registration is free, and you can sign up here.

Talis is a sponsor of the 8th European Summer School for Ontological Engineering (SSSW 2011). We are sponsoring it for a very simple reason. The mix of theoretical, practical and collaboration skills used by all the students involved from across Europe directly corresponds to how we work at Talis. You can read a bit about our passion for this on the Nodalities Blog here.

Talisians have attended two recent events focused around opening up governmental data. You can read more about this trend in the US in Bernadette’s Thanksgiving post, and more about the UK-focus from Phil Archer on the consulting blog.

Talis is pleased to announce that Ontotext is joining its platform partner program. Ontotext specialises in core semantic data tools and has built BigOWLIM—a very scalable RDF database. More details will follow and you can read more about Ontotext here.

We’ll be hosting a Talis Open Day at our offices in Birmingham on 10 November. We’ll cover the world of Linked Data from concept to application and have a wider look at the state of Linked Data in Action. You can have a look at the slides from past ‘Days,and you can register here.

Talis Group LTD will now have a new subsidiary with the excellent name: Talis INC. The INC means, of course, that we’ll have a new member of the Talis Group bringing our Platform, managed services and expertise to the United States. More info on the Nodalities Blog.

A couple weeks ago, the BBC asked us to load a set of data into the Talis Platform to support an upcoming episode of Panorama about the highest paid public-sector jobs in the UK. The result of which is the Panorama data exploration tool, letting users browse through data about top salaries.

Talis is running a series of two-day training courses introducing the world of Linked Data, SPARQL, Data modelling, and more. These are hands-on courses that will involve practical exercises that will leave developers familiar with the process of modelling, generating and querying RDF datasets. You can find out more here.