Currently students are presented with all sorts of lists from all sorts of sources, subject librarians and tutors alike. Typically these resources will be presented on a web page, useful stuff for your course etc. There are many such pages and lots of duplication. Maintaining these resources takes a huge effort. The Metadata Index provides a single collaborative application that uses and enhances actual catalogue records to provide subject resource lists.
Subject librarians can identify and 'mark-up' useful resources.
The index can then output suitable 'lists' for dynamic rendering into a number of applications. Our demonstrator includes a 'select your department' list and examples of a library resources page and an academic course support page. The big issue here is the data is all coming from the same central 'expert' resource. As resources change all the pages containing lists automatically reflect this. This box was purchased at the beginning of the project and represents a medium powered server of the time.