iBerry

Several interesting conversations via blogs and email have raised a number of issues. The first concerns the identity of the iBerry 'team'. I hadn't thought our identity (authority?) really mattered too much since with iBerry, what you see is very much what you get but I've had to point out that we really do have very little in the way of an organized team of 'known' people. Apart from myself, a retired UK academic, there's Marielle, a psycholinguist, ( widged.com, now in New Zealand and who kindly hosts iBerry for free) but otherwise we simply rely on anyone who cares to contribute in one way or another - and whenever.

As far as the community side of iBerry is concerned there are now almost 200 registered users distributed all over the globe. They can customize iBerry to their own tastes, communicate privately with each other and create academic content in the Subject Portholes - if they so wish. As a non-profit making site we have no hidden agendas, 'premium' services or advertising to worry about, but equally we have no resources apart from our users. Any further development of our academic community is therefore very much a matter for the community itself. The content management system we use (Drupal) has unused facilities and we would be delighted to receive any constructive suggestions - please contact us.

Personally, I would like more help in keeping our listings up to date as I'm finding it difficult to cope with the current rush of new OCW and from now on my main concern must be with the Open Courseware Directory. It may be that our Higher Education Resource sections are hardly worth maintaining now as this type of information is so easy to access elsewhere. I would welcome opinions on this - or better still some volunteers who might consider the matter and implement any recommendations!