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Initial Announcement

Author: Andrew Cox

JISC are funding the ANGEL Consortium to develop tools to integrate learning environments with digital library developments

With more and more courses going online and the proliferation of networked information resources there is a pressing need to integrate access for students, and to integrate support and management from academics and librarians. JISC  has funded the ANGEL consortium to develop powerful access management tools which will be available for reuse by the whole HE community by the end of the project, March 31st 2003.

Institutions using ANGEL will be able to offer students the advantages of

• integrated access to digital library resources e.g. from the local library, the DNER Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) and the wider Web; online learning as delivered for example by WebCT and similar course-content management tools; and locally produced resources such as reading lists, examination papers, lecture notes, electronic course packs, model answers, discussion lists and tutorial advice.
• customised and personalised views of available resources, based on course needs, current progress and personal preferences
• seamless access to all the services
• support across the whole range of material

Educators and librarians will be able to

• design courses which effectively combine all kinds of material
• track student progress through all resources
• offer support and guidance across all sorts of networked sources

The Guided Environment for Learning of ANGEL will build on pioneering research in integrating access in the hybrid library such as the Headline PIE and in virtual learning environments such as De Montfort's Learning Domain. The Networked Authentication part of the effort will develop an access management system. ANGEL will be working closely with JCAS JISC Committee for Authentication and Security who are designing the successor to Athens, SPARTA.

As well as portable, re-usable, open software components the project will deliver for the whole HE community updates on personalisation, authentication and authorisation developments public reports on the metadata, licensing and other interoperability issues.

The consortium led by London School of Economics and Political Science, also includes De Montfort University, EDINA, Sheffield Hallam University, South Bank University and the University of Edinburgh. The project lasts for 30 months starting September 1st 2000.