Benefits

intraLibrary has many benefits for all sections of the University and College community; Students, Teaching Staff, Librarians, E-Learning and IT Staff for example.

How Do Students Benefit From intraLibrary?

IntraLibrary gives students:

• Access to relevant and up-to-date course material
• Access to material via the web
• Trustworthiness of source material

IntraLibrary allows this because:

• Students always have access to the latest information
• Information is reviewed prior to lodging in the repository, therefore can be relied upon as being up-to-date, accurate and relevant to their course requirement
• Easy to use web interface makes access easy
• “Access from anywhere” takes the library to them

IntraLibrary offers easy, fast access to a wide range of high quality learning objects, that can be relied upon to be accurate and relevant to the course being studied

IntraLibrary allows teaching staff to:

• Deliver high quality teaching
• Reduce lecture, tutorial and seminar preparation time
• Maintain student interest
• Improve exam results

IntraLibrary does this because:

• Teaching staff has access to a wide range of materials
• intraLibrary supports mixed learning environments
• Most teaching material does not have to be prepared from scratch, leading to
• Faster preparation of new classes and course modules

IntraLibrary will improve your curriculum content and reduce preparation time, at the same time as giving you valuable feedback on the value of your learning objects.

Of prime importance to librarians within universities and colleges are these issues:

• the need to build their world digitally
• cataloguing
• search and discovery
• staying legal - adhering to copyright law
• ease of delivery
• flexibility – includes ALL digital objects – no need for separate systems for images, e-prints, etc
• integrates with library catalogues and search tools
• supports open standards

intraLibrary helps because:

• all objects are kept in the same place
• it is very easy to update
• delivery by web browser makes it easy for users to access
• licence and copyright issues easily managed
• collections can be easily established and managed

intraLibrary offers a digital repository that is easy to set up, maintain and manage and allows fast access to a wide range of materials that are controlled and legal (licence and copyright)

The E-Learning staff within a university or college is tasked with:

• Provision of a high quality of service to the institution, teachers and students
• Management, maintenance and availability of e-learning objects, to facilitate the creation and dissemination of quality learning material
• Maximising return on investment through the encouragement of sharing resources, and the selection and implementation of multi-purpose infrastructure
• Supporting the teaching staff in the creation and delivery of high quality learning content
• Flexibility in the usage of learning objects, by separating content from context allows content to be reused in different contexts
• Any new investment supports open standards so integrates with existing systems and avoids potentially costly proprietary lock-in.
• Wide range of material can be produced using a number of readily available and familiar content authoring tools, such as word processing packages, spreadsheets, virtual learning environments etc.

How intraLibrary helps:

• By allowing sharing and re-use, intraLibrary encourages the development of existing resources. Quality is improved through re-use, and learning object creation costs are reduced when re-use is high
• intraLibrary makes management of resources for re-use easier by making them easily visible to all users, through detailed taxonomy structures and powerful search capabilities
• Supports multiple virtual learning environments, and also supports teaching in the general learning environment
• Management of objects is clearer – rights management is handled within intraLibrary using a model based on open digital rights language. This permits multiple licences to meet the requirements of the organisation, allowing maximum availability of information, but remaining on the right side of the copyright laws.
• Supports teaching staff in creation of on-line courses, through making digital learning objects highly visible within the organisation, encouraging sharing and re-use.

intraLibrary makes the management of digital objects and course content easy. Sharing and re-use is facilitated, and as it is based on open standards it is therefore independent of virtual learning environment, so supports a wide range of teaching methods.

Important issues for IT staff within a university or college are:

• Low maintenance
• Easily updated
• Easy access
• Cost effective
• Relies on familiar technology

How intraLibrary benefits by:

• making management of resources for reuse easier
• allowing IT staff to deliver a high quality of service to the whole institution
• access via web browser makes deployment easy
• objects only existing in one place makes updating easy
• costs kept down through centralised storage of objects

intraLibrary is easy to deploy across an organisation, easy to access via a web browser and therefore requires minimal installation. Comprehensive support and updates keep involvement in day-to-day maintenance to a minimum.

Back to intraLibrary for Universities and Colleges