Supporting the N Gen learner by integrating e-resources within a university VLE

E-learning has become an integral part of many students learning experience. Over the last three years the availability of e-books and e-journals has increased dramatically and in many higher education libraries there has been a steady movement from print to electronic materials. At Bournemouth University over 50% of the total Library budget is now spent on electronic resources. In some Schools within the University it is in the region of 70 %. The ways in which students are using the resources are changing. In 2005, the number of electronic downloads from databases, e-books and e-journals, far exceeded the number of books borrowed. Statistics gathered from the Athens authentication service make it clear that many students access the resources remotely, and some rarely visit the Library. In 2005 Bournemouth University decided to implement a single VLE across the University and following many discussions and an extensive tendering process Blackboard was selected. The aim was to approach the potential of Blackboard from the perspective of our learners and so chose the unit of study as our standard for integration, which is the equivalent of a course in Blackboard. Thus the focus was on providing the materials where they would be most accessible to the students. The first phase of the implementation, involving the roll-out of the Blackboard to four Schools, presented an opportunity to review the Library provision and identify what could be done better at the unit level. There were several areas which had presented challenges for some time, namely the provision of reading lists, management of the Short Loan Collection and the storage of past exam papers. Implementing Blackboard gave us an ideal opportunity to address these problems. This paper will look at what has been done in these areas, and how the use of Blackboard can be tied in with the information skills sessions already being delivered by the Library Subject Teams and materials already available on the Library web page. It will also consider the second phase of the implementation and the opportunities it will present

The Clarens web services architecture

Clarens is a uniquely flexible web services infrastructure providing a unified access protocol to a diverse set of functions useful to the HEP community. It uses the standard HTTP protocol combined with application layer, certificate based authentication to provide single sign-on to individuals, organizations and hosts, with fine-grained access control to services, files and virtual organization (VO) management. This contribution describes the server functionality, while client applications are described in a subsequent talk.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 6 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures, PSN MONT00

Complete Semantics to empower Touristic Service Providers

The tourism industry has a significant impact on the world's economy, contributes 10.2% of the world's gross domestic product in 2016. It becomes a very competitive industry, where having a strong online presence is an essential aspect for business success. To achieve this goal, the proper usage of latest Web technologies, particularly schema.org annotations is crucial. In this paper, we present our effort to improve the online visibility of touristic service providers in the region of Tyrol, Austria, by creating and deploying a substantial amount of semantic annotations according to schema.org, a widely used vocabulary for structured data on the Web. We started our work from Tourismusverband (TVB) Mayrhofen-Hippach and all touristic service providers in the Mayrhofen-Hippach region and applied the same approach to other TVBs and regions, as well as other use cases. The rationale for doing this is straightforward. Having schema.org annotations enables search engines to understand the content better, and provide better results for end users, as well as enables various intelligent applications to utilize them. As a direct consequence, the region of Tyrol and its touristic service increase their online visibility and decrease the dependency on intermediaries, i.e. Online Travel Agency (OTA).Comment: 18 pages, 6 figure

Developing and Implementing Self-Direction Programs and Policies: A Handbook

Provides a guide to designing, implementing, and evaluating service delivery models that allow public program participants to manage their own care services and supports. Outlines elements of employer and budget authorities, enrollment, and counseling