3 : Presenting the virtual library

[finding library sites, searching for the library pages, page design, the library catalogue, integration, searching, browsing, access, portals]

Electronic journals

The book mentions services that manage electronic journals, including TDNet. An implementation of this is at Oxford University.

To the sources of information on ejournals should be added the lis-e-journals list which is usually very lively, informative - and often critical of suppliers' shortcomings!

Portals

As well as commercial products there are developments in national services by JISC with its Subject Portals Project.

Accessibility

Accessibility of Web sites to disabled users is becoming more important as the Special Education Needs and Disabled Act comes into force for higher education in the UK this year - see a summary.

Excellent guidelines for web design are provided by the Royal National Institute for the Blind.

MyLibrary and personalisation

A useful overview of UK and US developments in personalised Web sites is given by Bonnet. These include the Headline Personal Information Environment (PIE) [Gambles] from the Headline hybrid library project, where the user could group favourite or most used resources from the other pages of the site. Like other UK experiments this is not yet implemented as a service, but is contributing to the ANGEL project. An application to add is mycourse@unsw from the University of New South Wales, which presents course readings, exam papers, timetables, etc for a specified course module.

References

Bonett, M Personalization of Web services: opportunities and challenges Ariadne (28) June 2001

Gambles, A The HeadLine Personal Information Environment - evaluation Phase One D-Lib Magazine 7(3) March 2001