Information Scotland

The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland

February 2008 Volume 6(1)

Digital environment

Web Focus: Virtual libraries and digitisation, tracking down the best web resources

The Perth College Library Team provides another roundup of useful websites.

Digital libraries

NYPL digital – from the New York Public Library – provides an excellent selection of digital resources, including more than 600,000 images from primary sources, historical maps, vintage posters and much more. Suitable for researches and those with a more casual interest, the award-winning site is easy to search and contains an enormous depth of content.

Although the digital content available through the Library of Congress is, understandably, only a small fraction of the total resources held, it again provides the user with a wealth of digitised documents, photographs and recorded sound. The ‘American memory’ is comprehensive enough to warrant claims of being ‘a digital record of American history and creativity’.

Closer to home, the Virtual Mitchell provides a ‘glimpse of Glasgow in days gone by’. The vast array of images can be searched by area, street name or subject. Although it is permissible for users to download copies of the images for their own use, photographic quality images can also be purchased through the site.

Lastly, the National Library of Scotland also allows online access to its extensive range of collections covering various aspects of Scottish life.

Virtual Learning Environments (VLE)

VLEs are tools which enable academic staff to offer online courses to students who will not necessarily physically attend their institution. They are an ideal medium for distance learners, or students who enjoy working independently.

They have several advantages: remote access, flexibility in place/time, reduced administration costs, potential for higher student numbers, enable collaborative working and help to encourage student centred learning. However, they can be time-consuming to set up initially, and learning materials may have to be adjusted to suit the digital environment.

Students undergoing online courses need to be self motivated due to the small amount (or lack of) face to face contact.

The three most popular VLEs are Blackboard, WebCT (recently taken over by Blackboard) and Moodle which is a free Google product. Wikipedia VLE summary

JISC Virtual learning environments (VLEs) mailing list supports discussion about VLEs in education.

Online services

There is a large amount of good online services for the education sector of which three are listed here. Intute is a web resource for the education and research sectors which provides access to good quality websites with a description of the resource written by experts and then a direct link to the resource itself.

Jorum is a free repository service for staff in FE and HE institutions aiming at building a collection of learning and teaching materials, while NLN is a bank of e-learning materials free to organisations in the post-16 sector and is provided by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).
More general online services which might interest anyone include Directgov which is a government website with information about all public services with links to the appropriate service and electronic forms where available; topics include information on health services, travel and consumer rights. For genealogical information in Scotland, the official government source is the Scotlands People has access to almost 50 million records and can help with building a family tree.

Perth College Library Team Emma Brown, Richard Hughes, Donald Maclean

Information Scotland Vol. 6(1) February 2008

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.

Last updated: 16-Jul-2008