Summer Scholarship Programme

	SSP Project Summary

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Library Tools for Course Web Site Creators

Student

Andrew Marshall, University of York

Supervisors

Mario Antonioletti, EPCC

Gordon Darling, EPCC

John MacColl, SELLIC

This is a proposal to EPCC from the SELLIC Project for assistance through its summer scholarship programme. Two tools are proposed for development as prototypes, using data from the Library's web-based system, Endeavor Voyager (http://catalogue.lib.ed.ac.uk/). These tools are designed to facilitate the development of course web sites, whether these are developed using a proprietary course builder package such as WebCT (http://www.webct.com) or are 'hand made'. They take data from the Library's web-based systems in order to populate appropriate course web site pages. They do not allow academics directly to add, amend or delete data in the Library's systems. They provide a means of making library information available in the particular context of the course web site, while not preventing that information continuing to be made available from within the relevant Library system modules.

The tools should be made available to academic staff from the SELLIC web site, downloadable as icons in browser toolbars. They should be standards-based, and we would expect that the Z39.50 information retrieval protocol would be utilised in developing them.

The tools to be developed will be available only to lecturers. The descriptions below identify both the tools and the results as viewed by students. Two tools are listed, and should be developed in the course of the summer scholarship programme, as time permits. Development should be in the order shown.

Dynamic Reading List Manager

This tool interfaces with the library system to permit 'dynamic reading lists' to be compiled by teaching staff directly from the Library OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue). It allows lecturers to link record details from the OPAC directly to web sites. Web sites concerned may be freely available within an intranet or may require authenticated access (e.g. a web-based course management system such as WebCT). The reading list should appear within the course web site, i.e. it should not require users to link out of the course web site to access data about reading list items, but should rather populate the page automatically from the library system.

Functions

In the course web site, presents lecturers with a template web reading list document containing fields for lecturer name, course name and date
In the course web site, offers lecturers a view of the Library's web OPAC which permits records identified after a search in the OPAC to be tagged for inclusion in the reading list
In the course web site, allows tagged records to be submitted to the reading list document
Runs a background process to copy selected OPAC records to the web reading list document
Ensures that the web reading list can run a dynamic process in respect of each item to check on circulation status and holdings information, and that this process is automatically run each time the document is accessed by a student in the course web site

Electronic Reserve Interface

This tool populates appropriate pages within a course web site with data from the Library's electronic reserves module, and also permits academic staff to nominate learning materials for digitisation to Library staff. This tool permits both the identification of library system items within a course web site environment and the ability to request that particular items are added to the Electronic Reserve module. The electronic reserve module is not yet deployed at this University, but to see how it operates, look at the Auburn University library system, which is an Endeavor Voyager system, at http://eres.lib.auburn.edu/cgi-bin/eres/view.pl (look under 'Library' to find some non-password-protected materials). It is likely to be deployed at Edinburgh from this summer.

Functions

In the course web site, allows academic staff to tag records in the Library's Electronic Reserve module
In the course web site, allows academic staff to submit the tagged records to a 'Course materials' document in the course web site, as live links from the Library system
Runs a background process to copy selected Electronic Reserve records to the 'Course materials' document
Ensures that the 'Course materials' document can run a dynamic process in respect of each item to refresh the information from the library system, and that this process is automatically run each time the document is accessed by a student in the course web site
In the course web site, provides a form interface to academic staff allowing them to nominate particular learning materials to be added to Electronic Reserve. This generates an email message to Library staff.

The final report for this project is available here.

Webpage maintained by mario@epcc.ed.ac.uk