iTools & resources

Source: JISC

Enriching Digital Resources is a strand of the Digitisation Programme. Totalling an investment of just under £2 million, it is aimed at developing the range and quality of digital resources available to the JISC community by digitising analogue collections and enhancing existing digital collections for use in learning, teaching and research.

As a result of these strategic imperatives, JISC has funded projects under 3 headings:

• Pilot and small-scale digitisation or smaller feasibility studies prior to larger scale activity
• Enhancement of existing collections to help promote and further develop collections that have already been digitised but are currently underused or could benefit from extra development
• Developing clusters of content by bringing together related digital resources

All projects funded under the Enriching Digital Resources programme will deliver digital collections openly accessible to all. In addition, all digitised material will be licenced under particularly favourable terms to allow for its use and re-use in a number of different educational contexts.

Source: Becta

Under a major new agreement, all schools in the West Midlands now have access to an online resource of 50,000 copyright-cleared images through the Becta-funded initiative, JISC Collections for Schools.

The purchase was made by WMNet, the Regional Broadband Consortium for the West Midlands, on behalf of the 2,500 primary and secondary schools in the region. As a result, 750,000 learners in the West Midlands now have access to the online resource, the Education Image Gallery. Savings are estimated at over £510,000.

Across the UK, more than one million learners now have access to JISC Collections for Schools resources.

For more information visit the JISC Collections for Schools website.