Institutional Portals & Delivery of

Library Related SubjectResources

Malcolm Moffatm.moffat@hw.ac.uk

Institute for Computer Based Learning Heriot-Watt University.

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Or VLEs

About me

• Subject Librarian

• EEVL Service & Projects

• ICBL Research Associate

HW University Library c. 1996.

• What is an Institutional Portal?

EEVL Service c. 2003

• How can we get EEVL related resource used in IPs or VLEs?

Means to Embed EEVL search Functionality e.g.- Simple HTML searchbox, Z39.50, WSRP

Provision of Subject Based RSS feeds e.g.- New RSS feeds of EEVL Resources- Collection of Subject Based RSS feeds

Embedding of Infoskills Training Materials in VLEs

PerX Project 2005-7

• 2 year JISC Project to develop an engineering subject based cross search pilot & investigate issues.

PerX Project 2005-7

Task 33 - Embed cross search functionality within VLE at HW on a proof of concept basis.

http://vleap2.hw.ac.uk/

PerX VLE Embedding

PerX VLE Embedding

PerX VLE Embedding

• Cross search results passed in XML to VLE

• Potential for results to be re-used and manipulated in VLE e.g.– Exported/Saved– Emailed/posted to discussion forum– Creating reference lists

Questionnaire (x17) Library users

PerX VLE Evaluation

• Subject based cross search services are useful?- Agree 13, Don’t Know 4, Disagree 0

• Usefulness of embedding library resources in VLE?- Useful 14, Don’t Know 1, Not Useful 2

• What other elements of HW OPAC results are needed? - Loan Status, Number of Copies

• Usefulness of being able to re-use/manipulate results in VLE?- Useful 10, Don’t Know 4, Not Useful 3

• Which means to re-use results would be most useful?- Exporting results (15 votes)- Saving to Personal VLE Storage (14 votes)- Emailing/Posting Results Discussion Board (12 votes)- Adding to Assignments (9 votes)

• (2003) EEVL, VLEs, Institutional and Library Portals http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue39/eevl/

• (2007) Report on Embedding and Reusing PerX in a VLE http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~santiago/perx/embedreuse.pdf

• (2007) Building Bridges with Blocks: Assisting digital library and Virtual Learning Environment integration through reusable middleware. http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00009545/

Further Information

Views on Pilot (n=50)

• 94% believed there was a need for an engineering cross search service.

• 79% said that they were able to find useful information using the pilot

• 89% thought that adding more content would increase its usefulness

PerX Feedback

Views on Subject Based approach

• Google Results are already very good - competition is high.

• Need to stress that Perx is searching content sources which may be difficult/impossible to find via Google.

• Work is required to increase the relevance of Perx hits.

• Possible advantages of the Subject Based Approach include; efficiency/time savings, searching with subject specific terms, higher quality hits, novel content which is hard to find using search engines.

PerX Feedback