IU & UM get grant for Sakai module
Indiana University and University of Michigan
Receive Grant to Increase Visibility of the Invisible Web
http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=280&checkNewsId=321
“Indiana University, together with the University of Michigan as a subcontractor, requests $438,267 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a project to integrate access to library licensed digital content within Sakai. The project will run over an eighteen-month period from January 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007 and will provide funding for 3 additional FTE for project management, programming, interface design, and evaluation, as well as support for necessary travel, meetings, and computer hardware.”
It costs
that much and takes
that long?
Comments on the
grant proposal narrative :
- “Our goal is to integrate library resources seamlessly and easily so students think of and use these powerful resources first.” Yes, pedagogically this makes sense.
- “Currently the software offered by universities to professors to manage their courses— … — requires the instructors and students visit the library Web site separately, with few ways to effectively link resources between the two environments. Overwhelmed by this complex environment, students sometimes turn to Web search engines to find information for scholarly research.” Students sometimes turn to web search engines? I would rather say ‘frequently’. Until database searching is as easy to use and powerful as Google students will use Google first. Integrating library database search into CMS makes a lot of sense.
- “Innovations developed as part of this project will enable professors to link to thousands of licensed online library resources from within the course management software.” In theory one can do this now using ‘permalinks’ to the item inside the database. But many faculty and students don’t understand this and do not use them. And the user still has to tackle a totally different environment to view, print or copy the records.
- “Our goal is to integrate these resources with the Sakai online teaching and learning environment so students and faculty can easily utilize these resources in the context of a course.”
Proposal narrative
Posted by markp at February 25, 2006 03:53 PM