Posts Tagged ‘access_management’
In 2007/8 the RSCs were given funding for an Information Officers post whose role, for half of their time, is to seek and assist with authoring FE case studies for inclusion on the QIA Excellence Gateway. This work has resulted in a wealth of information being made available. Some of the library related case studies are below.
Loughborough College and West Nottinghamshire College: The search for single sign-on to electronic resources
Published: 2 April 2009
Following the withdrawal of JISC funding for ATHENS, the access and identity management system in July 2008, many FE colleges have been investigating alternative ways of accessing online resources. In this case study Loughborough College and West Nottinghamshire College have both successfully implemented Federated Access Management using Shibboleth technology to enable students to access various electronic resources by merely signing into their respective College networks.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=194242
Tresham Institute: Integrating two library collections
Published: 27 October 2008
Tresham Institute is a further and higher education college with campuses in Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, and The Rutland College in Oakham, with nearly 3,000 full-time and 13,000 part-time students. The College is in the process of a major redevelopment project, the first stage of which is a brand new £20 million campus in Kettering that opened to students in September 2007 and combines the provision that was previously offered at two sites in the town.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/Programmes/page.aspx?o=166924
Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College: Library system opens up new horizons
Published: 13 May 2009
Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College uses its new library system in an innovative way, which has benefited the College tremendously. From managing the library’s catalogue to assigning student locker keys, the new system has had a huge impact on the management of resources and improvement of student access to information.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=201973
Weymouth’s Learning Gateway improves behaviour
Published: 23 July 2008
Weymouth College set-up a “Learning Gateway” as part of a move towards creating a “learning” rather than a teaching environment. It involved setting up 180 workstations through which learners could access Moodle, both in timetabled sessions and on an open-access basis. The project has been so successful that, three years on, the College is looking at ways of developing it and putting it at the heart of a new build scheme.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/article.aspx?o=162093
Stafford College: LRC uses self-assessment toolkit
Published: 16 March 2009
Stafford College undertook a free self-assessment of its learning resource centre using a toolkit developed by the Council for Learning Resources in Colleges (Colric) and the FE and HE group of Cilip (CoFHE). The tool provided a way of evaluating quality of service and served as a useful benchmarking exercise.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/Programmes/page.aspx?o=192897
Harrogate College: RFID in the library
Published: 13 March 2009
RFID (radio frequency identification) systems are typically used in higher education libraries. This case study is an example of how RFID can work in a further education environment. RFID has many organisational advantages over using only a library management system, which can free staff time for a more personal library service.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=192902
Priestley College: How do you successfully develop your new learning space? Ask your students, of course!
Published: 13 March 2009
When Priestley College began to plan the redevelopment of its learning resource centre, it continued the culture of student involvement that exists within the College by asking students to help plan and create the new development. This case study describes how the JISC infoKit on ‘Planning and Designing Technology-Rich Learning Spaces’ was used as the starting point for ideas and planning, and how the finished development was the recognisable result of students’ ideas and plans.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=192957
Blackpool and The Fylde College: Rethinking spaces, rethinking staffing – new staff structure and roles for a technology-rich learning resource centre
Published: 13 November 2008
This case study focuses on how the staffing structure and roles have been redefined to meet the needs and challenges of ‘The Loop’, a new technology-rich library and learning resource centre at Blackpool and The Fylde College.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/Programmes/page.aspx?o=168007
Northampton College: Embedding information skills into the curriculum
Published: 26 January 2009
Northampton College has offered structured Information Skills programme in selected courses of study that have seen the skill levels rise of those learners. For example, one review concluded that grades had risen by 5% on a module that relied solely on assessment by essay.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=170609
Peterborough Regional College: Making information retrieval sessions “wicked”
Published: 29 June 2009
‘Library+’ staff at Peterborough Regional College have developed an innovative approach to help students get to grips with using the Dewey Decimal system. Inspired by staff development training using interactive whiteboards, they have designed an activity-based interactive pairs game which is fun, engaging and effective in helping students search for course-relevant resources in the library.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=228547
Lambeth College: Subject Finder – supporting student research online
Published: 11 March 2009
Subject Finder was an original idea of Teum Teklehaimanot, a member of Lambeth’s Learning Resources team, when he was himself a student and considering options for a web design course project. The subsequent development of Subject Finder as an education-based web directory and search engine has also been driven by his personal interest and commitment to providing a student-friendly Internet search tool. It is now becoming an embedded tool within the College’s virtual learning environment to support Lambeth’s students across a variety of disciplines.
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/page.aspx?o=191739
Henley College Coventry: IT Project Area focuses on learners’ needs
Published: 6 July 2009
The IT Project Area (ITPA) is part of a converged learning resources centre (LRC) service offering study support and audio and visual services. The ITPA reflects the learners’ needs and is very curriculum-focused with services, including one-to-one IT support sessions and a comprehensive LRC induction programme.
Personalising Athens
Posted on: May 2, 2007
I know a number of Colleges have been requesting this for some time – particularly for Infotrac. Athens have now added the functionality to change the name and description of each subscription resource. See the email below.
Eduserv are pleased to announce the release of functionality allowing Athens administrators to tailor the resource names and descriptions that appear in MyAthens. This allows administrators to describe products and services in a way that is meaningful to their users, rather than the current librarian-orientated description provided by the vendor. As an example of this, if you only subscribe to the Cochrane Library through Wiley InterScience, you can change the name of the resource to The Cochrane Library, and amend the text to describe the Cochrane Library.
Note that this functionality is not available to NHS England and the Health Service Executive (Ireland) administrators as alternate descriptions have already been supplied by those organisations.
To see this functionality, log into the Athens administrator interface and select Resources | List. Each resource has a link saying ‘Modify this description’. Selecting this link will display a separate page with fields for the resource name and description. Enter your new text and select the ‘Submit details’ button, and the changes will be visible immediately in MyAthens.
Alternate descriptions cannot be cascaded down through an account hierarchy, or uploaded in bulk. Therefore, if you have user accounts owned by a number of sub-administrators, you will need to make identical changes for each sub-administrator in order for all your users to see them.
Athens administrators are expected to exercise care, diligence and responsibility when amending resource titles or descriptions. Any changes to the text that could be interpreted as defamatory or a discouragement to use a service will be removed, as will access to this functionality.
If you encounter any problems, please contact the Eduserv Athens Service Desk at athenshelp@eduserv.org.uk quoting the username of the affected Athens user account(s) and the original name of the resource being amended.
RegardsPhil Leahy
Product Manager
At the JISC Conference this week, a new animation detailing what advantages implementing Federated Access Management technology will provide universities and colleges. Although it doesn’t go into technical detail, it gives a good overview of why this technology is being promoted. Take a look at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/avfiles/themes/access_management/am.wmv
As I’m sure most of you are aware, the JISC funding for Athens will finish at the end of July 2008 from this point (see the previous post), there will be a charge for the standard Athens service. I’ve been asked a lot recently about information concerning what commonly became known as Shibboleth and, from looking around, the best article I have found was in a copy of JISC Inform last year. Have a look at pages 11-13 http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/Inform%2013%20FINAL.pdf It’s a really good diagram showing all the stages that need to be completed to implement Federated Access Management.
The team from Eduserv Athens announced at the recent JISC Conference the pricing for Athens following the termination of the JISC funding on July 2008. I’ve attached the documents here.
Open Athens Flyer
Open Athens Pricing
Open Athens Introductory Letter
