Section 1 

1. Introduction  

1.1 Background 

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Further and Higher Education (F/HE) 

funding councils of the UK funded the JORUM project from October 2002   July 2005 to 

establish a repository for learning and teaching materials for use by F/HE institutions in the 

UK

1

. The JISC are continuing to fund the JORUM to setup a service to the UK FE and HE 

community and R&D activities will be carried out as part of this work (JORUM Service in 

Development)

2

. 

This report forms part of the ongoing Research and Development (R&D) activity of the 

JORUM project and is a continuing watch on developments in the area of e learning 

repository initiatives and projects, and the commercial systems that are used to underpin 

these. A related report is the JORUM R&D Report on Open Source Software/Free Software 

(OSS/FS), submitted to JISC in August 2005. 

1.2 Report Objectives 

The key objective of this report is to bring together developments in international e learning 

repository initiatives and commercial systems. The report has two separate aims, which are: 

1.  Keep track of developments relevant to the JORUM project; look at the features 

provided by other systems and how they might influence the development of JORUM; 

consider what the JORUM service should be in 3 years time, based on the above; 

2.  Monitor commercial learning repository systems and consider their possible 

applications to the JORUM project. 

The report covers e learning repository initiatives and commercial learning repository 

systems; their background, objectives and functionality. It also highlights emerging trends 

within this area and discusses their possible application to the JORUM repository service in 

development. 

1.3 Scope of the Report 

The following issues fall within the scope of this report: 

Define the various types of e learning repositories in the context of current global 

initiatives and projects 

Provide an overview of user expectations of a e learning repository 

Provide a summary of the main e learning repository initiatives relevant to JORUM 

Provide a summary of the main commercial learning repository products 

Highlight and discuss any emerging trends 

Provide recommendations with regard to the development of JORUM 

The information presented within this report is a result of internet research and 

communications with repository initiatives and commercial vendors. The two main reports 

1

 JORUM project website at 

http://www.jorum.ac.uk/research/archive/index.html

2

 JORUM Service in Development website at 

http://www.jorum.ac.uk

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