Newsletter 12, June 1996
| Newsletter 12, June 1996
LSS User Group |
The latest meeting of the group heard presentations from Mark Shields and John Heap, in addition to dealing with the usual business of reports from Service Managers and matters raised by Faculties.
Mark reported on the proposed University Information Service involving the use of the World-Wide Web. He highlighted the three basic purposes of the Service as being to promote the University, to exchange information and to support academic development. Gary Taylor had been seconded from LSS and has been working on developing pages, and on setting up training courses for LMU staff which have been very well received.
Whilst welcoming the developments, the Group did stress that policies need to be agreed at University level before Schools are allowed to start mounting pages. John Heap advised that a forum of co-ordinators from all Faculties would be set up so that issues such as whether students should be allowed their own pages; whether fan clubs (!!) should be able to use server space; whether pages must all conform to the same pattern could be decided before any effort was wasted in creating "wrong" pages. This was due to be established after the LSS Web Event, but as yet the author has no knowledge of such a forum.
It was also noted that the problem of access for students and staff would need to be addressed if the service was truly to be a University Information Service for all and not for just some!
John Heap gave some preliminary feedback concerning the recent investigation of Information Needs within the University. This was carried out by Barry Peters in a consultancy capacity on behalf of the Information Needs Working Group. A massive staff development need had been identified, to reflect the newer approaches and methods for teaching and learning. Communications had also been raised as a major issue, with a real need for easy access to email for all staff, and a need for an extension of services to allow dial-up access from home for staff and students. The final report will be discussed at Executive Board, and we can but await the outcome. The Group was interested in the findings, and hoped that there would be concrete results.
One additional point concerned the expected increase in use of the Lecture Theatres at Beckett Park, with the move of the Faculty of Business. It was pointed out that the two larger theatres, which have good projection facilities, would be heavily used by FoB, simply to cope with large numbers, meaning that smaller groups having a need for the audio-visual facilities would suffer. It was agreed that the next upgrading should be of one of the smaller lecture theatres, in an effort to alleviate this problem. Staff involved may wish to lobby Thérèse Walker individually on this matter.
The next meeting of the Group will be held in June. Please contact your Faculty representatives if you have any matters to raise - or speak to me directly.
Sue J Welch
