Linda Kerr introduces a project from the Access to Network Resources section of the eLib programme which takes a holistic approach to providing access to high quality on-line engineering resources.
EEVL [1] is approaching the end of its two-year funding from JISC as part of the eLib Project. We have applied for a further twelve months of precious funding to enable us to carry on providing and developing our services, to tie in with other three-year Subject Based Information Gateway projects such as SOSIG [2] and ADAM [3].
EEVL provides a free gateway to networked engineering resources, primarily for the UK Higher Academic community, however it is peculiarly gratifying to see from the log files that users from Greenland and Swaziland, as well as the USA Military Network have also accessed our site.
The project is based at Heriot-Watt University Library and the Institute of Computer Based Learning, also
at Heriot-Watt. An integral part of the project is the EEVL Team - subject specialists from Napier
University, Imperial College London, Edinburgh University, the Nottingham Trent University and
Cambridge University, who locate and describe websites for the database of engineering Internet resources.
This devolved system has meant that EEVL has been able to build up the database quickly, but more
importantly the project has had input from subject librarians who are also information providers to our
target group. There is central "quality control" of resources, based on decisions reached by the EEVL
Team. Each record is examined a second time before being made active. This model of resource location
and evaluation is something we intend to continue in year three.
And how do you find out information needs? EEVL completed an evaluation [8] of the project's pilot stage and will hopefully extend this evaluation in year three. A series of sessions, introducing EEVL to engineering department staff and students at various universities, will also provide ongoing feedback on user expectations and requirements. Handouts from these sessions will form part of an online EEVL tutorial which will be made available at the EEVL site.
Material on this page is copyright Ariadne/original authors. This article last updated/links checked on 18-May-1997