The Learning Exchange is a digital library designed to facilitate the sharing of information and knowledge in various formats: audio, video and text. The Learning Exchange was built in-house using open source software (Drupal ) rather than proprietary software, which allows us greater control over functionality and enables us to respond flexibly and quickly to changing user needs and the ever changing technical environment. This approach not only delivers what we believe is a better product, it saves money on annual maintenance and support fees.
The Learning Exchange provides both a place to house materials not readily available and the facility to create collections of materials already available online (linking to, rather than reproducing, existing content). Because it is structured in a way that is friendly towards search engines, the Exchange increases the ‘findability’ of valuable materials that otherwise might be overlooked. In addition the content of the Learning Exchange is harvested by Social Services Knowledge Scotland (SSKS) , a portal to social service knowledge and information created by NHS Education for Scotland (NES) in partnership with IRISS.
More on the creation and evolution of the Learning Exchange.