Introduction
Linköping University introduces itself on the web as follows:
Exploring new fields, walking new paths. A non-traditional cooperation across subject and faculty borders defines the interdisciplinary approach that is the hallmark of Linköping University (LiU). An entrepreneurial spirit of education characterizes the university's history. Since its foundation in the 1960s, the university has established itself as an innovative and modern institution in both education and research. It was first founded as an independent college in 1970 and in 1975 it became Sweden's sixth university. Today LiU is organized in four faculties: Institute of Technology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, and Educational Sciences. LiU has about 27,000 students.
Linköping University Library has about 100 employees, 42 of whom work fulltime or part-time as subject librarians, as part of their job description. Many of them have been working with course-related web pages for five years. Together with teachers and researchers they have created library resource pages with internet links to course literature and reading lists; they have collected relevant web pages for courses; and have selected important journals and useful databases. Students can reach the pages from their course web. During the first two years of this project financial support was received from the Royal Swedish Library. Later extra funding was provided by the two faculties involved, the Institute of Science and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
The aim has been to create methods for:
• dealing with questions and problems that might arise when working with the integration and teaching of information retrieval in subject courses, modules and study programmes
• rendering teachers’ information retrieval more effective in order to save time, get better results and increase the understanding of students’ needs.
Background
The Swedish Parliament has decided on changes to the Higher Education Act (Högskolelagen, SFS 2001:1263, Chapter 1). The new statutes are more stringent than previous ones, saying that undergraduate education shall provide students with:
• the ability to make independent critical judgements
• the ability to independently distinguish, formulate and solve problems
• the ability to prepare for changes in working life.