Apologies for cross posting CALIM/NoWAL (Consortium of Academic Libraries in Manchester/North West Academic Libraries) are pleased to announce the following speakers for November and December. The RDN Hubs - John Blunden-Ellis 27/11/2002 (Manchester) & 06/12/2002 (Preston) The RDN is a free Internet service dedicated to providing effective access to high quality Internet resources for the learning, teaching and research community, primarily in further and higher education. The RDN provides access to a series of Internet resource catalogues containing descriptions of high quality Internet sites, selected and described by specialists from within UK academia and affiliated associations. Value- added services such as interactive web tutorials and alerting services are also provided to enable users to make more of their time on the Internet. This presentation will include an introduction to the RDN and the various subject hubs that comprise it. The specific focus will be on PSIgate (Physical Sciences), its development and plans. John Blunden-Ellis is currently Service Manager of the PSIgate and GEsource (Geography and the Environment) gateways, hubs of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN). The JISC & what is does - Dicky Maidment-Otlet 29/11/02 (Manchester) The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is a strategic advisory committee working on behalf of the funding bodies for further and higher education (FE and HE) in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also works in partnership with the Research Councils. The JISC promotes the innovative application and use of information systems and information technology in FE and HE across the UK by providing vision and leadership and funding the network infrastructure, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and information services, development projects and high quality materials for education. Its central role ensures that the uptake of new technologies and methods is cost-effective, comprehensive and well focused. This session will provide a brief overview of the JISC and how it works - `It’s your JISC`. Followed by a focus on collections and portals. Dicky Maidment-Otlet is the co-ordinator for the JISC Communications and Marketing team. Working as a part of the JISC executive he is the first point of contact for JISC Services and JISC Regional Support Centres Each talk will last for an hour. As always CALIM/NoWAL welcome attendees from other institutions. Each event costs £15 per person. For further details or to book a place on a course go to http://www.calim.ac.uk/traindev/course/courseinfo.asp Booking for all courses is to be done via the web. See http://www.calim.ac.uk/traindev/course/useful.htm If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you Gil - - Gil Young CALIM/NoWAL Support Officer Minshull House Chorlton Street Manchester M1 3EU Phone: 0161 247 6673 Fax: 0161 247 6846