Lesly Huxley

Tribalism and territoriality in the staff and educational development world

As universities change in response to their environment, so also do staff roles. In parallel with these changes, in recent years there has been significant incremental growth of provision designed to support the learning and development of university staff in the United Kingdom, so that several intersecting but distinct development communities now exist. It is timely to consider what approaches to development support are now appropriate to help sustain and enhance the capacity of universities in the future. A model is proposed, with four main aspects – inclusion, strategy, integration and scholarship. Existing development communities are considered in relation to the model. A new concept of development community is advocated, aligned with the proposed model. A research agenda is also proposed, to inform thinking and practice about university work.

Renardus: fostering collaboration between academic subject gateways in Europe

Renardus is a collaborative project of the EU’s User‐friendly Information Society programme with partners from national libraries, university research and technology centres and subject gateways Europe‐wide. Its aim is to build a single service allowing users to search and browse existing Internet‐accessible scientific and cultural resource collections distributed across Europe. Renardus builds on the successes of subject gateway initiatives in Europe and elsewhere, and is evolving a collaborative model for addressing the increasingly difficult issues of sustainability and scalability facing individual gateway services. Describes the project’s context, progress to date and outstanding issues. Also outlines the opportunities and benefits for future collaboration with other organisations in developing the fully operational service.

The Renardus broker service: collaborative frameworks and tools

Renardus was developed under the EU’s User‐friendly Information Society programme by partners from national libraries, university research and technology centres and subject information gateways Europe‐wide. Since January 2000, those partners have been working towards realisation of their aim to build a single Web‐based “broker service” providing cross‐search/cross‐browse access to existing Internet‐accessible scientific and cultural resource collections distributed across Europe. This paper describes Renardus’ key concepts and highlights some of the collaborative frameworks and tools developed and deployed during the project, and the existing technical and information standards used, particularly in support of metadata modelling, mapping and sharing and the information architecture. Issues, implications and benefits for end users and information professionals are presented through illustrations of the interface design. We conclude with an outline of organisational arrangements and strategies, outstanding issues and next steps in encouraging future collaboration with other services.

Renardus: Following the Fox from Project to Service

The Renardus academic subject gateway service in Europe was launched in April 2002. The author first presented the challenges facing this pan-European collaborative project at ECDL 2000. This paper identifies the progress made in information, technical and organisational developments and deployment since Lisbon 2000, presents the results of evaluation activities and outlines the challenges, setbacks and successes for Renardus transition--in June 2002--from project to service.

From Static Content to Dynamic Communities: The Evolution of Networked Educational Resources.

Five years ago the problems being addressed by major educational resources were how to locate and structure a burgeoning universe of Web sites in order to serve their subject and professional communities with useful and relevant content. Today, new challenges, demands and opportunities are emerging: the linking of content with community, static information with dynamic news. Describes the evolution of three educational resources in the social sciences (SOSIG, Biz/Ed and Regard) and their use of personal profiling, distributed contributions and RSS news channels to serve and gather information. Examines the issues that arise from changing user bases and technologies, sustainability and the need for collaboration, data protection and privacy concerns. Analyses the tensions these and other services face as they move toward a model that links the static with the dynamic, content with community.

A social science gateway in a shifting digital world: shaping SOSIG for users' needs of the future

This paper considers two of the key challenges facing a mature UK subject gateway (SOSIG): the sustainability of a labour‐intensive service and innovation and evaluation needed to keep pace with user needs. SOSIGs history and changing contexts are sketched and issues of changing Internet search technologies, trends in user behaviour, and changes in higher education teaching or learning are analysed. Reflects on the “Google challenge” and the need to take a more strategic approach to engaging with the user community, given emerging audiences and technologies. Concludes with how SOSIG will be shaped for the future through collaboration, service design and user engagement.

Human Resource Management in Higher Education: idiom and incidence

ABSTRACT Increasingly, in many employment contexts, ‘human resource management’ (HRM) has replaced ‘personnel management’ as a description of the functions associated with managing people in organisations. This paper reports the findings of a small‐scale investigation of HRM in an ‘old’ and ‘new’ university, in order to describe the extent to which the principles and practices of HRM have had an impact on higher education (HE) institutions. Interviews with senior staff with management responsibilities in each university showed that, while some of the language of HRM is beginning to be more widely used, the practices associated with managing staff are only slowly changing. Some contrasts are noted in the acceptability of HRM approaches to the different cultures of ‘new’ and ‘old’ universities. The tension between HRMs cultural appropriateness and HEs need to strive for excellence and competitive advantage is shown to resolve itself in a continuing pattern of fragmented rather than integrated personnel pr...