Librarians’ lives made easier, reports the Times Higher
The Times Higher Education reports this morning on a new initiative by JISC TechDis, in collaboration with the Publishers Association, to provide resources to support the delivery of learning materials to disabled students and staff.
One of the resources – Publisher Lookup UK - will enable education providers and publishers to source electronic formats of textbooks for students with disabilities more quickly and efficiently than existing processes allow. Currently publishers generally provide one of two digital formats – either an e-book or a PDF – but sourcing more accessible formats can be a complex undertaking both from the publishers’ and the users’ points of view. Publisher Lookup UK provides mechanisms for simplifying request, delivery and access processes between the education and research sectors and
UK publishers. The site currently provides links to over 150 imprints and additional guidance on making PDFs accessible to users with a range of disabilities.
The second resource – Guide to Obtaining Textbooks in Alternative Formats – provides guidance to teaching, learner support and library staff or anyone who needs to provide text books in alternative formats for reading-impaired learners. Disability law protects disabled learners by requiring institutions to make adequate provision for disabled students, including the provision of alternative formats in a timely manner. People with a range of disabilities benefit from alternative formats and many learners with disabilities are struggling with traditional printed texts despite alternatives being available.
Look out for a range of podcasts highlighting these resources and some of the issues faced by disabled students and staff, librarians and others in the coming weeks.
For further information:
Enriching digital resources
Far from becoming redundant libraries are playing an increasingly important role in institutions in an information age dominated by Google. This includes providing access to a wide variety of content through the digitisation of special collections which would otherwise remain hidden, not easily accessible to users and in danger of being lost - and not the ones that Google would seek to include in their digitisation activity.
One of the key assets that libraries bring to the table when mediating the provision of digitised resources is their specialist knowledge of the material and their curatorial input, which constitute great added value for teachers, researchers and learners engaging with the material.
A recent JISC Circular invites HE and FE institutions to apply for funding for “Enriching Digital Resources”. The funding is of particular relevance to institutions that wish to maximise user engagement with their resources as well as capitalise on previous or current investment in digitisation of collections. It focuses on three strands:
1. Pilot and small-scale digitisation. Proposals may focus on undertaking pilot digitisation, small-scale digitisation or a smaller feasibility study prior to larger scale activity. Alternatively, proposals may focus on completing or adding to a digital resource where there are some gaps in the content or room for expansion.
2. Enhancement of existing collections. Funding under this heading would be targeted to help promote and further develop collections that have already been digitised but are currently underused or could benefit from extra development.
3. Developing Clusters of Content. Proposals under this heading will focus on bringing together related digital resources.
More information about the call is available on the JISC web site