The system was piloted within UWEs Faculty of the Built Environment in 1996-97. The success of the pilot prompted the current expansion of ResIDe into a second faculty and on-going discussions about rolling out the system to other faculties and campuses. ResIDe was developed as a replicable and scaleable system for the wider HE community and a wide range of dissemination activities was undertaken to demonstrate the system and to present research conclusions. Technical difficulties have been resolved relatively easily. Most problems delaying the Project, or which remain partially resolved, centre around social, political and economic issues within UWE, the wider HE community and the wider educational and publishing communities.
Electronic reserves are still very new in Britain.
Few people within the educational or publishing fields appreciate their aims or the way in which they work. Electronic reserves raise implications which are not understood in such diverse areas as the obtaining and granting of copyright clearance permissions, of supporting new teaching and learning initiatives and of cultural changes and convergence of teaching and support roles within educational institutions. One small project was only able to add its voice to such national debates as that on digital copyright. Nor was a one year project able to do more than raise some of the issues about new teaching and learning opportunities within its own university. ResIDe, however, is confident that it has been able to make a valuable contribution in both these areas, although it is difficult to evaluate its impact - particularly in the wider arena.