Creating web guides for a library portal

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Creating web guides for a library portal

• Jackie Wickham Intute
• jacqueline.wickham_at_nottingham.ac.uk
• Martin Gill University of Leeds
• m.r.gill_at_leeds.ac.uk

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Introduction

• Case Study how the University of Leeds
  integrated Intute resources and services to
  create its subject guides to electronic resources.

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Presentation Outline

• What is Intute
• Intutes Integration services
• Background to Case Study
• Implemetation
• Results and benefits

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What is Intute

• Intute is a national Internet service guiding you
  to useful Web resources for education and
  research.
• It offers an online catalogue and interactive
  subject tutorials.
• It is a free service aimed at the UKs higher and
  further education sectors and is relevant to
  students, lecturers, researchers and teachers.
• Intute was formerly known as the Resource
  Discovery Network (RDN).
• Funded nationally by the JISC

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Network of specialists

• Four subject groups comprise Intute
• Arts and Humanities
• Health and Life Sciences
• Science, Engineering and Technology
• Social Sciences
• Hand selected, quality assured content Best of
  the Web

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The big headache!

• Too many resources on Net
• Keeping up to date with new ones
• Link checking existing content
• Assuring quality of resources

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How Intute can help
Create your reading lists from Intute resources
Put Intute search box on your library Web page,
eg. for Intute Social Science resources
List latest resources added to Intute, on your
library Webpage
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Integrate the Intute Search Box
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Search results
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RSS feeds
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Creating customised e-resource lists

• Use MyIntute to
• Create your own account
• Save records
• Tag records with your own keywords
• Export data into your web pages
• Get automatic updates
• Choose from Intute and add your own resources

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Customised e-resource lists
A link to a resource not in Intute but added by
the user in MyIntute.
Links imported into blog from MyIntute using
Javascript
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Leeds in the mid 1990s

• Pre Google
• Yahoo was a directory site
• Subject gateways in their infancy
• Developed a ROADS database to list subject
  databases and websites
• Broken down to a subject or even module level

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2006

• Server needed replacement
• Software no longer supported
• Database indexes full
• Workload issues of maintaining links
• Databases now integrated into our catalogue
• Wanted to avoid flat webpages of links
• Approached RDN as they were re-launching as
  Intute for advice

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Pilot Project

• To use MyIntute to embed Intute records in our
  website
• Sample subjects Education, Law, Engineering,
  Dentistry, East Asian Studies
• Looked at
• Workload
• Availability of Intute records
• Technical integration

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Project results

• Workload
• MyIntute very quick and easy to use
• Availability of records
• Most subjects had few problems
• Searching Intute found us better websites in many
  cases
• Some issues of scope, some language issues
• Technical integration
• Accessibility issues

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Intute Search Box
Intute RSS Feeds
Records from Intute catalogue
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Cost savings (estimated)

• No server replacement (2k)
• No software purchased (10-20k)
• Minimal systems development (10k)
• No link checking, no content checking

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Working with Intute

• Very helpful and flexible
• Accessibility issues addressed
• Local resources MyNonIntute records

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2007

• MyIntute rolled out to all subjects
• Replaced our general website listings
• ROADS server decommissioned

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Questions?