1. Institutional Portals & Delivery of Library Related Subject Resources Malcolm Moffat m.moffat@hw.ac.uk Institute for Computer Based Learning Heriot-Watt University. ^ Or VLEs

2. About me Subject Librarian EEVL Service & Projects ICBL Research Associate

3. HW University Library c. 1996. What is an Institutional Portal?

4. EEVL Service c. 2003 How can we get EEVL related resource used in IPs or VLEs? Means to Embed EEVL search Functionality e.g. - Simple HTML searchbox, Z39.50, WSRP Provision of Subject Based RSS feeds e.g. - New RSS feeds of EEVL Resources - Collection of Subject Based RSS feeds Embedding of Infoskills Training Materials in VLEs

5. PerX Project 2005-7 2 year JISC Project to develop an engineering subject based cross search pilot & investigate issues.

6. PerX Project 2005-7 Task 33 - Embed cross search functionality within VLE at HW on a proof of concept basis. http://vleap2.hw.ac.uk/

7. PerX VLE Embedding

9. Cross search results passed in XML to VLE Potential for results to be re-used and manipulated in VLE e.g. –Exported/Saved –Emailed/posted to discussion forum –Creating reference lists

10. Questionnaire (x17) Library users PerX VLE Evaluation Subject based cross search services are useful? - Agree 13, Dont Know 4, Disagree 0 Usefulness of embedding library resources in VLE ? - Useful 14, Dont Know 1, Not Useful 2 What other elements of HW OPAC results are needed? - Loan Status, Number of Copies Usefulness of being able to re-use/manipulate results in VLE? - Useful 10, Dont Know 4, Not Useful 3 Which means to re-use results would be most useful? - Exporting results (15 votes) - Saving to Personal VLE Storage (14 votes) - Emailing/Posting Results Discussion Board (12 votes) - Adding to Assignments (9 votes)

11. (2003) EEVL, VLEs, Institutional and Library Portals http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue39/eevl/ http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue39/eevl/ (2007) Report on Embedding and Reusing PerX in a VLE http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~santiago/perx/embedreuse.pdf http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~santiago/perx/embedreuse.pdf (2007) Building Bridges with Blocks: Assisting digital library and Virtual Learning Environment integration through reusable middleware. http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00009545/ http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00009545/ Further Information

15. Views on Pilot (n=50) 94% believed there was a need for an engineering cross search service. 79% said that they were able to find useful information using the pilot 89% thought that adding more content would increase its usefulness PerX Feedback

16. Views on Subject Based approach Google Results are already very good - competition is high. Need to stress that Perx is searching content sources which may be difficult/impossible to find via Google. Work is required to increase the relevance of Perx hits. Possible advantages of the Subject Based Approach include; efficiency/time savings, searching with subject specific terms, higher quality hits, novel content which is hard to find using search engines. PerX Feedback