ukoln is supported by: enhancing access to e-resources dr liz lyon, ukoln, university of bath, uk...

UKOLN is supported by:

Enhancing access to e-resources

Dr Liz Lyon, UKOLN, University of Bath, UK

JISC RSC-SE Workshop

April 2004, Epsom.

www.bath.ac.uk

a centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

JISC RSC SE Workshop 2

Overview

• About UKOLN• What are the issues to consider?• Some exemplars, tools and good practice

guidelines– Portals: what is their role?– Embedding content: digital libraries and VLEs– Web-based developments: how to improve them

• Questions and discussion

JISC RSC SE Workshop 3

About UKOLN • Core funding from JISC & MLA Museums, Libraries & Archives

Council• Cross-sectoral remit• Our audiences include:

– HE / FE (L&T, research, admin)– Cultural heritage (museums, public libraries, archives)– National libraries (British Library)– e-government (Office of the e-Envoy)– NHS / health sector – International digital library research community

• University of Bath• 30 staff• Mix of technical support and development, advisory and research

activities• http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

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What are the issues?• Finding (good) “stuff”

– Overload: the Google factor

– Relevance– Provenance – Quality-assurance

• Providing a full range of resources – User requirements– Selectivity– Cost-benefits– Licensing – Management information

• Accessing resources– Accessibility

– Legislation

• Re-using and sharing materials– Learning object, data,

article, image, program

– Interoperability using common standards and protocols

• Training & support• ???

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How can you help learners to access e-resources more easily?

• Portals: what is their role in presentation?• Embedding content:

– Seamless access to quality-assured content– Integrating digital libraries and VLEs

• Improving Web development activities– The importance of standards– Benchmarking principles

• Exemplars and tools from UKOLN projects and services

“a secure, single point of interaction with diverse information, business processes and people, personalised to a user’s need and responsibilities”

IBM, 2003.

“ an online service that provides a personalised, single point of access to resources that support the end-user in one or more tasks.”

JISC, 2003.

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JISC Fair PORTAL project• www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk • Exploring a wide range of issues relating to institutional

portals, and the integration of national resources with institutional information and services.

• Deliverables:– Stakeholder requirements: what they want / don’t want– Survey >600 responses + f2f consultation – Literature review of outputs– Review of metadata standards for portal users e.g.

eduPerson, IMS LIP– Mapping services to organisational structures– Beginners guide to uPortal

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Ariadne Issue 35, 2003

Syndicated content….

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7 x RSS Recommendations

1. Adhere to the standards

2. Ensure persistence

3. Don’t use too many feeds < 6

4. Ensure currency

5. Each feed should have a purpose

6. Register your RSS feed

7. Create your textual content carefully

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Creating more RDN resources for FE

• RDN4FE project (JISC X4L funding)• Record enhancement tool• Backend feature to increase records tagged for FE

community• FE tagging

– FE notes– FE subject (LearnDirect scheme)– FE level

• FE colleges can – categorise and export their own records into RDN – import RDN records for local use

• Tested with 2 pilot colleges (Hammersmith & West London College & The Sheffield College)

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Embedding RDN resources summary

• Working with the RDN http://www.rdn.ac.uk/publications/workingwithrdn/

– RDN-include and RDNi-Lite– > 100 downloads – RDN-Channel-Lite– RDN SRW interface

• Embedding RDN services into VLEs – http://www.rdn.ac.uk/publications/rdnvle/

• RDN4FE project• rdn-support@rdn.ac.uk

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Providing Web good practice guidance

• UK Web Focus – Brian Kelly• Promotes standards and best practice to the

FE and HE communities• JISC W3C representative • Ariadne regular column

– Web testing tools– Web Watch survey of server software– HTML standards compliance– http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/

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Ariadne Issue 38, 2004

Standards and compliance….

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Events and dissemination

• Institutional Web Management Workshop • 8th Annual event• 27-29 July 2004 • University of Birmingham• Theme: Transforming the Organisation• Open call for speakers and facilitators

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Benchmarking your Web site: is it up to scratch?• Workshops for RSCs (Eastern, South-west, Yorkshire &

Humberside)– Home pages: size, entry points– Validation, accessibility, broken links– Currency– Hits (popularity)– Statistics– Performance

• Tools e.g. Bobby, WAVE, Dr Watson, NetMechanic, WebSiteGarage, Nedstat, DejaVu

• http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/rsc-eastern-2003/

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How you can help learners to access e-resources more easily

• Portalise: make the presentation of resources user-friendly and attractive

• Integrate: make access as seamless as possible through embedding tools

• Standardise: use open source tools to fine-tune Web development activities

• More info at www.ukoln.ac.uk

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Thank you.

Questions …….