Short overwiew on the project’s development on national level

• The office completed work on the experimental internet resource catalogue interface in time for its first public presentation at the 2003 European Conference on Educational Research (ECER). Although this initial release of the database contains limited functionality, it appeared according to timing in the project plan and with content from all project partners.

• Along with all PERINE partners, the BEI participated in several events at the 2003 ECER. The office produced promotional literature about the internet resource catalogue and arranged for its distribution to UK educational researchers and at ECER.

• Sam Saunders, in collaboration with the Anita Monty from Denmark, and Elfriede Tajalli from Austria, presented a paper summarising results of the PERINE surveys of internet usage - "Educational researchers' use of information services on the World Wide Web: a first report on the PERINE survey of educational researchers in 8 European nations during 2001 and 2002". Phil Sheffield chaired a PERINE workshop "Educational researchers and information services in the European research area: the PERINE experience of connecting information services with researchers' interests".

• At a PERINE business meeting held at the conference, the project partners agreed to pursue opportunities for collaboration beyond the initial project term, specifically on development of the experimental internet resource catalogue. The BEI agreed to coordinate the presentation of a further proposal to the European Commission at an appropriate time. The BEI spent some time during the reporting period seeking to contact possible partners in countries new to the PERINE network.
  
  
  National and European activities

• The BEI office has formalised the delivery of recent British Education Index bibliographic records from its website. The page now allows free access to recent records not available in public releases of the BEI database.

• Education-line now provides access to selected papers resulting from the UK Teaching and Learning Research Programme. This collection will continue to grow as the Programme develops.

• As part of another project relationship, the office is delivering information about resources connected with "widening participation" (encouraging access to higher education) through the website of the UK Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) subject centre for education, Escalate. Information delivered by the BEI appears at http://brs.leeds.ac.uk/%7Ebeiwww/escalate. It is likely that this service will be adopted by the LTSN Generic Centre during 2004.

• Following on from information in previous reports, the BEI office is now involved in a question and answer service to student teachers. This project involves the BEI, the University of London Institute of Education, the Teacher Training Agency, and several providers of initial teacher education. The Teacher Training Agency has also engaged the BEI office to examine the viability of an internet portal facilitating access to databases of value to educational practitioners.
  
  

For more information on the institutes actitivities please visit

http://www.bei.ac.uk