Enhancing access to eresources

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Enhancing access to e-resources Dr Liz Lyon,
UKOLN, University of Bath, UK JISC RSC-SE
Workshop April 2004, Epsom.
UKOLN is supported by
www.bath.ac.uk
www.ukoln.ac.uk
a centre of expertise in digital information
management
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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

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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
• 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

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a secure, single point of interaction with
diverse information, business processes and
people, personalised to a users need and
responsibilitiesIBM, 2003.
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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 / 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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Ariadne Issue 35, 2003 Syndicated content.
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7 x RSS Recommendations

• Adhere to the standards
• Ensure persistence
• Dont use too many feeds lt 6
• 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

• 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/publicat
  ions/workingwithrdn/
• RDN-include and RDNi-Lite
• gt 100 downloads
• RDN-Channel-Lite
• RDN SRW interface
• Embedding RDN services into VLEs
• http//www.rdn.ac.uk/publications/rdnvle/
• RDN4FE project
• rdn-support_at_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 .