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Integrating digital libraries and VLEs in higher & further education

Dissemination and contact with the wider community

The experience from the LinkER programme was that active dissemination programmes sparked a great deal of interest in the academic community. Projects were approached and asked to collaborate in large-scale programmes and to feed into developmental work at other universities. Some are being used as exemplars by vendors and project partners. It is pleasing to note that as well as providing detailed technical outputs, projects wrote for non-technical audiences. This is important if the broader community is to be persuaded of the importance of systematic integration of library and other information resources into VLEs.

Dissemination activities might include:-

• Project websites which must be frequently updated. These offer to the wider community project deliverables and other outputs, conference and seminar presentations, technical papers, background information and much more.
• "In-house" outreach consisting of presentations to staff, discussion groups, briefings sessions, formal staff meetings, and interviews for publication in in-house newsletters. A number of projects have recognised the value of fostering support and interest at an early stage within their institution.
• Workshops for the local and wider community
• A webcast, which can be a new experience for both the project and some of the participants
• Presentations to user groups and vendors
• Conference presentations both within the UK and internationally
• Publication of articles in journals such as Ariadne, ALT-J, Assignation, JCAL, The New Review of Libraries and Lifelong Learning and elsewhere.

There is a danger that projects simply rely upon familiar HE / library community outlets for their dissemination activities, or perhaps are less aware of appropriate fora through which to disseminate their work to other audiences. The JISC has a bigger picture of the HE and FE communities than most individual projects and it might be advisable to take advice on ways to reach the widest possible audience.

Additional Resources

Forthcoming..... contributions gratefully received