A major recent issue for libraries has been the relationship of library services to emerging instructional technology environments. Increasingly, on many campuses, the course management system facilitates the relationship between learners and between learner and teacher. Interestingly, there is now a systems vendor who povides integrating solutions between the worlds of library and instructional technologies. Based in the UK, they now also have a presence in the US. They have a goodish list of UK customers and have been working with Drexel in the US. There is not very much detail about their systems on the website. They appear to have their origins in solutions for managing reading lists, which is not altogether surprising as the reading list is potentially a ‘mini-portal’, and is a site of negotiation between informational and instructional systems and personel.
Sentient DISCOVER [previously ReadingListDirect] is an innovative learning resource management system which provides seamless integration between learning management systems, integrated library systems, OpenURL Resolvers and content repositories, such as online journal databases. [Sentient Learning]
