Intute was a free Web service aimed at students, teachers, and researchers in UK

further education Further education (often abbreviated FE) in the United Kingdom and Ireland is additional education to that received at secondary school that is distinct from the higher education (HE) offered in universities and other academic institutions. It ...

and

higher education Tertiary education (higher education, or post-secondary education) is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank defines tertiary education as including universities, colleges, and vocational schools ...

. Intute provided access to online resources, via a large

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

of resources. Each resource was reviewed by an academic specialist in the subject, who wrote a short review of between 100 and 200 words, and described via various

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

fields (such as which subject discipline(s) it would be useful to) what type of resource it was, who created it, who its intended audience was, what time-period or geographical area the resource covered, and so on. As of July 2010, Intute provided 123,519 records. Funding was stopped in 2011, and the site closed. A partial archive of the Intute library is maintained a
XtLearn.net

History of Intute

Intute was formed in July 2006 after the merger of the eight semi-autonomous "hubs" that formed the Resource Discovery Network (RDN). These hubs each served particular academic disciplines: * Altis - Hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism * Artifact - Arts and creative industries * Biome - Health and life sciences * EEVL - Engineering, mathematics, and computing * GEsource - Geography and the environment * Humbul - Humanities * PSIgate - Physical sciences * SOSIG - Social sciences The restructuring and rebranding was undertaken to create a service with a more uniform identity and appearance, better cross-searching facilities, and more focused technical and management teams. As part of the restructuring, the eight RDN hubs were initially reorganised into four subject groups. This process also incorporated th
Virtual Training Suite
a series of continually updated, free online Internet training tutorials for over 65 subject areas. The Intute service was geographically distributed, with staff based at several UK universities. *

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

Heriot-Watt University Heriot-Watt University () is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was established in 1821 as the School of Arts of Edinburgh, the world's first mechanics' institute, and was subsequently granted university status by roya ...

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Education ...

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

* University College Birmingham In July 2010, funding for Intute was significantly reduced and the Consortium was disbanded. Intute was then maintained by Mimas at the

, and the Virtual Training Suite was maintained and developed by the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the

. The Intute.ac.uk service ended July 2011. The educational social bookmarking servic
XtLearn.net
now maintains an unofficia
archive of the majority of the Intute content set

Funding

Intute was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). Some of the subject groups received funding from the

Arts and Humanities Research Council The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), formerly Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB), is a British research council, established in 1998, supporting research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities. History The Arts a ...

(AHRC) and the

Economic and Social Research Council The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), formerly the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). UKRI is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) funded by the UK government. ESRC provides fundi ...

(ESRC). The

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of Burroughs Wellcome, one of the predec ...

was a partner of Intute: Health and Life Sciences and contributed content to this section. In 2010, funding from

Jisc Jisc is a United Kingdom not-for-profit organisation that provides network and IT services and digital resources in support of further and higher education and research, as well as the public sector. Its head office is based in Bristol with ...

was significantly reduced, and ceased in August 2011. In July of that year Intute stopped updating and actively maintaining the site. It remained available on the Internet without maintenance for three years beyond that. Intute looked for ways to fold its content into some other service but none were found.

Functionality

Intute's online database could be searched or browsed using a standard Web browser. The database contained 123,519 records (July 2010). Old records were reviewed regularly by subject experts to ensure that information was as current as possible. The advanced search engine enabled users to search the database by keyword, subject, or resource type, whilst the browse structure enabled time period and resource type filtering, as well as the ability to restrict searches to within particular browse headings. The Intute Integration tools enabled users to customise and export Intute content to their own web pages or VLEs. This included newsfeeds, an embedded search box and MyIntute (where users could save Intute content in their own online space, tag and export it). Machine-readable interfaces to the database were available using the Z39.50, Search/Retrieve Web Service and OAI-PMH protocols.

Awards

Intute was awarded the 2007

Jason Farradane Award The Jason Farradane Award is made each year by the UK eInformation Group (UKeiG), a specialist group within the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. The award is given to an individual or a group of people in recognition ...

in recognition of its outstanding work in the field of information science. The award was made on behalf of the UK eInformation Group (UKeiG), part of the

Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP, pronounced ) is a professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge management, knowledge managers in the United Kingdom. It was established in 20 ...

(CILIP). It is sponsored by the ''Journal of Information Science'', published by

SAGE Publications Sage Publishing, formerly SAGE Publications, is an American independent academic publishing company, founded in 1965 in New York City by Sara Miller McCune and now based in the Newbury Park neighborhood of Thousand Oaks, California. Sage ...

Notes

References

*, Harrison, N. J. 2009. "Gateway to engineering". ''Information Scotland''; February 2009; Vol 7 (1). p10.
Cilip.org.uk
Harrison, N. J. and Place, E. 2009. "The best of the web". ''Library and Information Update''; January/February. pp 48–50.
Edinburghlibrariesagency.info
Harrison, N. J. 2008. "Raising the profile: Intute Engineering Online Library".''TACIT''; March 26, 2008.
Mimas.ac.uk
Charnock, L. 2008. ''Intute: Informs Accessibility''. ''Focus on Mimas'', Issue 37, September.

External links

Intute archive page
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060829221848/http://www.intute.ac.uk/ , date=2006-08-29
XtLearn.net - Archive of Intute LibraryMIMASJoint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
British educational websites College and university associations and consortia in the United Kingdom Jisc Online databases Organizations established in 2006 Organizations disestablished in 2011 Tertiary educational websites Web directories