Graduate Careers Australia
ergo - Number 91 June 2003
Higher Education at EdNA Online: Discover, Communicate, Collaborate
The Education Network Australia (EdNa) Online is a national asset collaboratively funded by the Australian Commonwealth and State/Territory governments, for the Australian education and training community. One of the world’s largest publicly funded databases, EdNA Online is updated daily, and features more than 16,000 freely accessible online education and training resources.
EdNA Online also provides an extensive range of free services, including instant delivery of resources, simultaneous searches across inhouse and external collections, communication tools and an aggregation of local collections in the national database.
HE@EdNA Online
HE@EdNA Online (the Higher Education section) is a rich knowledge base focused on the needs of the higher education community. It is currently growing, with initiatives underway to raise awareness of the services and resources available. One of these is the production of a weekly newsletter, the Higher Education Update; this aims to keep tertiary education professionals and students abreast of developments in the higher education arena, provides news from HE@EdNA Online and offers an opportunity for readers to contribute materials. Free subscription to the newsletter is available from the EdNA Online site.
Research and Teaching Support
EdNA Online also provides flexible support for research, teaching and learning needs, including:
- EdNA Online browse – every time a new resource is added to the national database, it is displayed via a dynamic link
- instant update on recently added resources in the EdNA Online database
- EdNA Online search, accessing the EdNA Online collection as well as certain external collections
Other new initiatives in 2003 include:
- MyEdNA – a fast, simple, customisable service
- RSS, or Rich Site Summary, which will allow users to get instant news and conference alerts from EdNA Online
- Search Centre – multiple free quality education and training databases – search EdNA Online, GEM, MERLOT, VOCED and others, simultaneously or in any combination
- Developer’s Kit – XML APIs and HTML versions of EdNA Online services – search or browse, noticeboards, news headlines and EdNA Online newsletters.
Communication Encouraged
Members of the higher education community are encouraged to share their knowledge and expertise through EdNA Online by submitting resources and participating in discussions and forums. In addition, free noticeboards are available for education and training purposes. Users are provided with administrative access to set up their noticeboard, along with any support they may require. Each noticeboard has its own URL and they are all available as XML. These noticeboards have the potential to be embedded within the user’s own website, taking on that site’s particular look and feel.
Opportunities for Collaboration HE@EdNA Online aims to expand collection exchange between universities and the EdNA initiative, emphasising the benefits of local contributions to the national database. “Harvesting” is the term given to this activity, and there is a growing community of “harvesters” who contribute to the EdNA Online metadata repository. Additionally, in a process called “reversed harvesting”, EdNA Online can “give back” an enhanced collection to the harvester with other relevant resources included.
Browse HE@EdNA online now: www.edna.edu.au/highered.html
Further information about the services and resources available from HE@EdNA Online can be obtained by contacting Nelly Ivanova, Higher Education Information Officer [email protected]
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Nelly Ivanova
Higher Education Information Officer, EdNA
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