FIBS 2007

Intute: Health and Life Sciences – a new era of online resource discovery

Jackie Wickham, Service ManagerCarol Collins, Service Officer

Outline

• What is Intute• Intute site and services• Training and support• Intute for the Biosciences• Questions

What is Intute?

• Intute is a national Internet service guiding you to useful Web resources for education and research.

• It is a free service aimed at the UK’s higher and further education sectors and is relevant to students, lecturers, researchers and teachers.

• Wider audience includes practitioners• Intute was formerly known as the Resource

Discovery Network (RDN). Intute: Health and Life Sciences is the former RDN hub BIOME.

Network of specialists

Intute: Health and Life Sciences is one of four subject groups that comprise Intute. The other three groups are:

• Arts and Humanities• Science, Engineering and Technology• Social Sciences• Consortium of seven universities, over 70

partner institutions, freelance subject specialists

• Quality assured content developed by the community for the community

Harvester broadens your search

• Searches 300,000 health and life sciences related pages

• Automatically generated from the web addresses in the Intute catalogue

• Updated monthly

Feedback on VTS

• It's great this exists - saves me from having to write something myself, which wouldn't have been as good anyway.Lecturer, University of Warwick

• Thank you for sorting out the confusing world of the internetUndergraduate student, University of Durham

Personalise

My Intute• Create your own account

• Save searches, subjects and records

• Tag records with your own keywords

• Weekly email alerts

• Export data into your systems and sites

Content for the community

Embedding in Your Institution• Intute content is available for use in your

own institution, website and VLEs

• RSS – new resources, Intute news

• Advice on how to use our content available from: http://www.intute.ac.uk/embedding.html

Providing a service of high quality

• Team of subject specialists

• Finding new resources• Evaluating them• Cataloguing them• Reviewing existing records

Finding new resources

• News/current awareness

• Maintaining balance

• Suggestions from users

Evaluating resources

• Scope/audience• Authority and reputation• Comparison with similar sites• Content• Accuracy• Currency• Format

Defining the subject scope and audience

• Collection development policy

• Relevant curricula/QAA benchmarks

• Audience

Evaluating resources

• Scope/audience• Authority and reputation• Comparison with other sites• Content• Accuracy• Currency• Format

Cataloguing a new resource

• Template

• Keywords/classification

• Description

Reviewing existing records

• Regular and frequent link checks

• Specific criteria for full reviews of different resource types

Resource types

• Formal institutions/organisations

• Local/informal groups

• Individual enthusiasts

• Commercial organisations

• Images/videos/programmes

• Publications: books/reports

User involvement

• Consultation on the review of the Collection Development Policy

• Comments on existing records

• Suggestions for new sites via the “Suggest a site” form

Contact details

Jackie Wickhamjacqueline.wickham@nottingham.ac.ukCarol Collinscarol.collins@nottingham.ac.ukPeter Hoarepeter.hoare@nottingham.ac.uk

www.intute.ac.uk