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Hypermedia Online Publishing: the Transformation of the Scholarly Journal

8.5.2 Origins and organisation

The initial idea came from Nancy Fjällbrant. DG XIII from the European Union had given some talks about possible projects, and Jan Rohlin thought it would be good to have some international projects, despite the EU jargon. Nancy Fjällbrant had already identified a range of weaknesses in user-education in parts of Europe and elsewhere. EDUCATE was originally targeted towards librarians, to replace paper-based materials and to assist them with user-education. The EDUCATE team worked on the idea for one year, developing their own software client, but when the Web came along the decision to move was an easy one. The hyperlinking in the Web environment allowed them to move further and further away from a strictly linear product and thereby to make it more useful.

The decision to seek EU funding arose from a need to raise the amount of money required to do things properly (something very hard to do on a local scale from a small country like Sweden). A successful bid for funding was made under the European Union Telematics for Libraries programme -Third Framework. The original funding was for a three year period from January 1994 through February 1997. Chalmers University and the Library (as well as some other funding bodies) contributed an equivalent amount of money. The project was in part driven by a desire to do it anyway - the funding just allowed this to happen more effectively and sooner.

Nancy Fjällbrant was able to draw on her International Association of Technology University Libraries (IATUL) contacts to get assistance with the project. Under the grant proposal, Limerick University was to be the overall coordinator. In practice, Chalmers University of Technology Library provides the day to day technical and administrative management. Imperial College are doing some demonstration versions and courseware. Limerick did some of the interface design and Web development. Translation (and adaptation - using and linking to different resources) is being done into French at Ponts et Chaussées and into Spanish at Barcelona.

Last modified: Monday, 11-Dec-2017 14:38:41 AEDT