Making Effective Use Of Electronic Resources

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Making Effective Use Of Electronic Resources
Slides available at lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-f
ocus/events/workshops/rsc-se-2004-04/gt

• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk URL http//www.ukoln.ac.
uk/
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Contents

• 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 your Web
  services
• Questions and discussion

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About UKOLN

• Core funding from JISC MLA (Museums, Libraries
  Archives Council)
• Cross-sectoral remit
• Our audiences include
• HE / FE (LT, 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
• Based at the University of Bath
• About 30 staff
• Mix of technical support and development,
  advisory and research activities
• See lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/gt

About UKOLN
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What Are The Issues?
The Issues

• Accessing resources
• Accessibility
• Usability
• Legislation
• Re-using and sharing materials
• Learning object, data, article, image, program
• Interoperability using common standards and
  protocols
• Support
• Learning from others
• ???

• 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

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

• 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

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Portals
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Portals
Exemplars

• a secure, single point of interaction with
  diverse information, business processes and
  people, personalised to a users 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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www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk
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JISC Fair PORTAL project
Exemplars

• 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 / dont
  want
• Survey gt600 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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Current Developments
Exemplars

• Developments for PORTAL
• Web services
• Portlets
• Standards e.g. WSRP
• SAKAI
• Universities of Michigan, Indiana, Cornell etc.
• Currently Java-based
• Integrated access to Learning Management Systems

Message don't start from scratch. Learn from
others.
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Embedding Content
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Ariadne Issue 35, 2003 Syndicated content.
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7 x RSS Recommendations
Exemplars

• Adhere to the standards
• Ensure persistence
• Dont use too many feeds lt 6 items
• Ensure currency
• Each feed should have a purpose
• Register your RSS feed
• Create your textual content carefully

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Creating More RDN Resources for FE
Exemplars

• 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
Exemplars

• Working with the RDN lthttp//www.rdn.ac.uk/publica
  tions/workingwithrdn/gt
• RDN-include and RDNi-Lite
• gt 100 downloads
• RDN-Channel-Lite
• RDN SRW interface
• Embedding RDN services into VLEs
• lthttp//www.rdn.ac.uk/publications/rdnvle/gt
• RDN4FE project
• Email rdn-support_at_rdn.ac.uk

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Web Developments
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Providing Web Good Practice Guidance

• UK Web Focus
• Provided by Brian Kelly
• Promotes standards and best practices to the FE
  and HE communities
• JISC W3C representative
• Regular column in Ariadne e-journals
• Web testing tools
• Web Watch surveys
• Accessibility ? Search engine software
• HTML compliance ?
• See lthttp//www.ariadne.ac.uk/gt

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Ariadne Issue 38, 2004 Standards and compliance.
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Benchmarking Web Sites Workshop

• Benchmarking Web Site Workshops for RSCs
  (Eastern, South-west, Yorkshire, )
• Home pages size, entry points
• Validation, accessibility, broken links
• Statistics
• Looks at
• Auditing and testing tools
• Limitations of tools and procedures
• Procedures for addressing problems

See lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/work
shops/benchmarkinggt
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Quality Assurance

• QA Focus
• Project to develop QA methodology for JISC's
  digital library programmes
• Has developed simple QA methodology and range of
  support materials
• Resources are being adapted to support FE needs

See lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/gt
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Events and Dissemination

• UK Web Focus organises annual Institutional Web
  Management Workshop
• This year's event (8th in series) takes place at
  University of Birmingham on 27-29th July 2004
• Aimed at members of institutional Web management
  teams
• Provides talks, parallel sessions, etc.
• Also provides valuable social networking
  opportunities (canal trip this year)
• Theme is Transforming the Organisation

See lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/work
shops/webmaster-2004/gt
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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
• Reuse make use of resources, tools, expertise,
  etc. which is readily available
• Standardise make use of open standards in order
  to maximise access and interoperability

More information is available at
lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/gt