Sharing resources

Many years ago the Support Services Group (then TLIG) set up an IT document sharing archive. Basically it allowed people to provide a list of links to online documents they were happy to share. For various reasons, the archive wasn't maintained and died several years ago.

Brian Kelly (UKOLN) set up a simple Google-based search for a few of the original sites. And we have been asked to investigate if the community would find a more comprehensive resource useful.

I think there are a number of questions we need to answer before we start.

What is a document? Or is 'document' an old-fashioned word, and not really relevant. The document sharing archive did share documents, most of which were originally paper-based. Perhaps now we should be talking about resources - online documents, FAQs, YouTube videos etc?

What can we share? Here at Leeds, in 2000, we had a comprehensive set of in-house documents covering most of the applications on our desktop. However, since then we've bought Watsonia's Engine Room, so many of our new documents are site-licenced and can only be made available within the University. I wondered how many other institutions are in a similar position. And of course, even with in-house documents you may not want to freely share them.

Finally, we don't want to re-invent the wheel. Is there already somewhere to share IT resources? Let us know.