Apologies if you see this message more than once: it is being widely
distributed since it contains important information about changes made
today to the British Education Index's web pages.
Anyone accustomed to using the BEI's own web pages at, for example,
http://www.bei.ac.uk, http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol or
http://www.beirc.ac.uk, will encounter a new and more integrated site
the next time they call. Central to the site are new search interfaces
that give up-to-date access to records that the BEI elects to make
freely available. Using the new facilities will require some adjustment
from people who have grown used to the previous presentation of
information, which has been stable for 8 years, but changes have been
made in the confidence that they offer improvements, particularly in
search functionality.
There are some new features that will be pertinent to users of the BEI
and to people unaware of the BEI but with an interest in educational
information.
In the "Search the free collections" area of the site it is possible to
search freely available BEI records either by category (Education-line,
other internet resources, journal articles), or all together. There are
currently over 5000 records in the Education-line collection and over
4000 in the internet resource collection, all giving access to full
texts. Both of those collections continue to grow. At any given time,
the new site also typically gives access to up to 1000 BEI journal
article records that have not yet been included in the full BEI
subscription database. BEI records for journal articles normally include
links to some publishers' information. Records are added to the freely
accessible collections as they are approved by BEI staff, meaning there
is new content most working days.
In the "Conference services" area of the site is an archive of
information derived from the BEI's Education Conference Programmes. If
the BEI has been provided with a programme by conference organisers,
details about authors, titles and abstracts of papers are transferred to
an archive database which currently holds over 15,000 records. This
archive information has not been visible before in this form.
In the "Partnerships" area, the site also provides brief information
about the significant projects in which the BEI is, or has been,
involved.
We hope you will enjoy exploring the new site: please feel free to email
us at [log in to unmask] if you have difficulties, comments or
observations. We apologise for the unavoidable disruption to peoples'
existing bookmarks and to page or site links. Please note that the
changes do not affect delivery of the BEI through existing subscription
channels.
Best wishes,
Phil.
Phil Sheffield
Manager: British Education Index
Brotherton Library
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
http://www.bei.ac.uk
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