Intute was a free Web service aimed at students, teachers, and researchers in UK further education and higher education. Intute provided access to online resources, via a large database of resources. Each resource was reviewed by an academic specialist in the subject, who wrote a short review of between 100 and 200 words, and described via various metadata fields what type of resource it was, who created it, who its intended audience was, what time-period or geographical area the resource covered, and so on. As of July 2010, Intute provided 123,519 records. Funding was stopped in 2011, and the site closed. A partial archive of the Intute library is maintained at
History of Intute
Intute was formed in July 2006 after the merger of the eight semi-autonomous "hubs" that formed the Resource Discovery Network. These hubs each served particular academic disciplines:
The restructuring and rebranding was undertaken to create a service with a more uniform identity and appearance, better cross-searching facilities, and more focused technical and management teams. As part of the restructuring, the eight RDN hubs were initially reorganised into four subject groups. This process also incorporated the , a series of continually updated, free online Internet training tutorials for over 65 subject areas. The Intute service was geographically distributed, with staff based at several UK universities.
In July 2010, funding for Intute was significantly reduced and the Consortium was disbanded. Intute was then maintained by Mimas at the University of Manchester, and the Virtual Training Suite was maintained and developed by the Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol. The Intute.ac.uk service ended July 2011. The educational social bookmarking service now maintains an unofficial .
Funding
Intute was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee. Some of the subject groups received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council. The Wellcome Trust was a partner of Intute: Health and Life Sciences and contributed content to this section. In 2010, funding from Jisc was significantly reduced, and ceased in August 2011. In July of that year Intute stopped updating and actively maintaining the site. It remained available on the Internet without maintenance for three years beyond that. Intute looked for ways to fold its content into some other service but none were found.
Functionality
Intute's online database could be searched or browsed using a standard Web browser. The database contained 123,519 records. Old records were reviewed regularly by subject experts to ensure that information was as current as possible. The advanced search engine enabled users to search the database by keyword, subject, or resource type, whilst the browse structure enabled time period and resource type filtering, as well as the ability to restrict searches to within particular browse headings. The Intute Integration tools enabled users to customise and export Intute content to their own web pages or VLEs. This included newsfeeds, an embedded search box and MyIntute. Machine-readable interfaces to the database were available using the Z39.50, Search/Retrieve Web Service and OAI-PMH protocols.
