Electronic Resources in the Virtual Learning

part of the project.
Resource discovery was a major area of research for eLib, and has
become extremely important to the success of e-learning, allowing
academics and students to identify and access high quality Internet
resources. Subject gateways were set up in numerous disciplines, for
example OMNI (Online Medical Networked Information) and SOSIG
(Social Science Information Gateway) during the early to mid 1990s.
These became known as the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) in
1998 and subject gateways were established in many other subject areas
so that there are now eight ‘hubs’.
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The RDN is a cooperative network
consisting of a central organisation, the Resource Discovery Network
Centre (RDNC), and the eight independent service providers. In contrast
to search engines, the RDN gathers resources which are carefully
selected, indexed and described by specialists in partner institutions. This
means that users can be confident that search results and browsing
connects them to websites relevant to learning, teaching and research.
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The digital library
The JISC Information Environment (IE)
In 1999 JISC launched the DNER (Distributed National Electronic
Resource), which aimed to provide:
… a managed environment for accessing quality assured information
resources on the Internet which are available from many sources.
These resources include scholarly journals, monographs, textbooks,
abstracts, manuscripts, maps, music scores, still images, geospatial
images and other kinds of vector and numeric data, as well as moving
picture and sound collections.
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It was envisaged that the DNER would be accessed through a range of
different access points, which were termed ‘portals’. The DNER
interfaces were designed to be distributed, in addition to the distributed
nature of the target resources. The main portal types included: the JISC
or central portal, subject-oriented portals of the RDN, local portals,
media-specific portals, data centre portals, curatorial tradition portals
and enriched interface portals. Local portals were hybrid library
developments, allowing tailored access to a selection of datasets of
importance to an institution, plus integration with other locally licensed
datasets and local products. It was argued that systems should be set up
to consult local resources first, e.g. the local OPAC or local CD-ROMs,
before external or charged services.
The DNER became known as the JISC Information Environment in
2002. JISC were aware that digital library developments may have left
users ‘bewildered’ at the range of resources available and wanted to
address this problem. They stated:
Considerable investment at both the institutional and the national
levels has been made to provide high-quality digital information
resources for further and higher education. But students, lecturers
and researchers are nevertheless currently faced with a vast and
sometimes bewildering range of potential sources of electronic
information … little wonder, then, that many users remain unaware
of their existence or fail to discover their value for their own learning,
teaching or research.
12
A technical architecture was developed to specify standards and
protocols to support the development of integrated resources and allow
ease of access for users. Documentation on the JISC IE architecture is
available from: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/distributed-systems/jisc-ie/arch/.
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Electronic Resources in the Virtual Learning Environment
These initiatives signified the recognition that the digital library was part
of a wider information environment. After 2000, digital library research
and development continued to be supported by JISC, although
increasingly it examined the role of digital libraries in relation to virtual
learning environments. These developments are discussed in Chapter 2.
The digital library today
This section provides an overview of some of the digital library services
and systems that are most relevant to this book. Many of the major
components of a digital library that can be exploited for e-learning are
discussed. These include:
■
library portals and digital library management systems;
■
electronic reserves;
■
digital repositories;
■
e-books;
■
e-journals;
■
reading list management systems;
■
e-print repositories.