Cookies

To help improve this site we place small files, known as cookies, onto your computer.

Our cookies aren’t used to identify you personally. They’re just used to make the site work better for you. They do this by:

  • measuring how you use the website so we can improve it to meet your needs
  • ensuring the website works properly
  • remember the notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again

You can manage these small files as you wish. You can even decide to stop any site from using them.

To learn more about cookies and how to manage them visit AboutCookies.org. You can also read the Jisc web team’s blog on cookie law.

How we use cookies

We use cookies for several purposes on this website – we’ve listed each of them below with more details about why we use them and how long they’ll last.

Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use our site, and rough demographics as to what groups of people are using our site. We do this to make sure it’s meeting your needs and to understand how we could improve it.

Google Analytics stores information about:

  • the pages you visit
  • how long you spend on each page
  • how you got to the site
  • what you click on while you’re here

We do not collect or store your personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this information cannot be used to identify who you are.

The following cookies are set by Google Analytics:

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Name Purpose Expires
_ga This helps us count how many people visit the site by tracking if you’ve visited before 2 years
_utma Like _ga, this lets us know if you’ve visited before, so we can count how many of our visitors are new to the site or to a certain page 2 years
_utmb This works with _utmc to calculate the average length of time you spend on the site 30 minutes
_utmc This works with _utmb to calculate when you close your browser when you close your browser
_utmz This tells us how you reached the site (like from another website or a search engine) 6 months
_gat_UA-376728-1 This is used by Google Analytics to ensure its work doesn’t have a big impact on the site’s performance 1 day

Website operation

The system that runs our website sets two cookies to allow it to run smoothly.

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Name Purpose Expires
has_js This tells the site whether you’re using JavaScript or not when you close your browser
visitedPreviously randomly generated number 60 days

YouTube

Some of our embedded videos use cookies. We are working to replace all these with cookie free versions.

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Name Purpose Expires
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE This tries to estimate your bandwidth and deliver a video of appropriate quality 240 days
YSC A unique identify given to a user on a site with videos when you close your browser
GEUP Allows Google to track viewers across sites that use YouTube videos 2 years
PREF Allows Google to track viewers across sites that use YouTube videos 240 days
GPS Allows basic tracking based on location on mobile devices (where permitted) 30 minutes

Twitter

We publish a number of Twitter feeds on the site.

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Name Purpose Expires
guest_id This is used to identify you to twitter and to track surfing habits between Twitter enabled websites 2 years

NB: Cookie guidance wording adapted from gov.uk, shared under the Open Government License.