1. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk Enhancing access to e-resources. Dr Liz Lyon, Director, UKOLN RSC-SW Meeting, Taunton. 2 nd July, 2003

2. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk 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

3. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk About UKOLN Core funding from JISC & Resource 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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5. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk 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 or using common standards and protocols Training & support ???

6. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk 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

7. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk a secure, single point of interaction with diverse information, business processes and people, personalised to a users need and responsibilities IBM, 2003.

8. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk 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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10. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk 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. Survey >600 responses + f2f consultation Stakeholder requirements –What they want / dont want Literature review of outputs Review of metadata standards for portal users e.g. eduPerson, IMS LIP uPortal guide to follow shortly

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20. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk Ariadne Issue 35, 2003 Syndicated content….

21. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk 7 x RSS Recommendations 1.Adhere to the standards 2.Ensure persistence 3.Dont 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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23. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk 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 Testing now with 2 pilot colleges (Hammersmith & West London College & The Sheffield College)

24. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk 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 Embedding RDN services into VLEs http://www.rdn.ac.uk/publications/rdnvle/ http://www.rdn.ac.uk/publications/rdnvle/ RDN4FE project rdn-support@rdn.ac.uk

25. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk 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 Annual conference 11-13 June 2003 Theme: Supporting our users

26. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk Ariadne Issue 35, 2003 A standards-based culture….

27. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk Benchmarking your Web site: is it up to scratch? Workshops for RSCs (Eastern and South-west) –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/

28. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk 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

29. A centre of expertise in digital information management www.ukoln.ac.uk Questions and discussion…….