Catriona II

This is an exciting period of growth in the development of electronic resources for teaching and research. Many examples of electronic resources for teaching and research such as lectures, slides and research papers are now readily available on the Web. However, a large proportion of the research and teaching material that is being created on computers is not yet available to the wider academic community. It is often only available to the creator and perhaps to local students. There can be many reasons why the electronic resources are not being made more widely available. These can be technical, organisational or legal (where there are concerns about copyright and the ownership of electronic resources).

The CATRIONA II project seeks to address some of these issues. It began in June 1996 and will last for two years, with a remit to investigate approaches to the management and creation of institutional and departmental electronic resources in Scottish universities. It will seek out high quality, locally-created, electronic resources on individual campuses and consider their value both within and beyond the local institution, examining intentions regarding the provision of campus-wide and external access to such resources. Associated questions relating to institutional policy, strategy, organisational infrastructure, and approaches to resource delivery and maintenance will all be explored.

A survey will be conducted, with the aim of providing an indication of the range of resources being created and the surrounding issues and concerns. This will begin at Strathclyde and Napier Universities, the lead institutions, but will extend to the other Scottish universities. An examination of approaches to policy, strategy, and organisational infrastructure will be carried out through various steering and discussion groups, again focusing on Strathclyde and Napier but extending to the other Scottish sites in due course. In addition a number of the resources identified in the course of the survey will be mounted on demonstration servers at the two lead institutions.

Have a look at our Web site for further information about the project; this can be found at http://catriona.lib.strath.ac.uk/ISC848/