Projects using the internet at the University of Haifa library: A case study on organizing a subject-oriented resource guide and a case study on the classical mythology multimedia project

In order to ease use of the Internet, many academic librarians around the world have begun creating subject- oriented Internet resource guides. The hope is that students and faculty will benefit from easier access to materials in their fields and reduction of time spent searching for relevant materials. Moreover, these guides will help keep users up to date with changes in their fields and will allow them to reap the benefits of the Internet without the necessity of learning all its intricacies. At the University of Haifa Library we have begun systematically to create home pages - subject-oriented resource guides - for use by the various Humanities and Social Sciences departments at the University. These pages aim to provide faculty and students with customized access to information resources and are designed specifically to suit their research and teaching interests. We have also developed an internet site containing a multimedia project for a course on Mythology in Western Art, which provides access to art images of classical Greek and Roman deities. Although home pages have been created by librarians around the world, the University of Haifa Library is the first library in Israel to undertake such a project. Not only has the library initiated the systematic creation of home pages for the various fields of study, it has also created, together with faculty members, a multimedia project on Mythology in Western Art not available anywhere else in the world and currently requested from several universities. This project presents a first in that the library has worked jointly with faculty members in the creation of course material in digital image format. The creation of home pages and other ease-of-access tools is especially beneficial to our faculty because the native language is Hebrew and not English. Therefore, the concentration of material in single sites on the Internet is particularly time-saving. This paper will describe the steps undertaken in the creation of two projects at the University of Haifa Library: an English Language and Literature home page and the electronic project Mythology in Western Art. Both are accessible from the University of Haifa Library's WWW Server. The URL for English Language and Literature is: http://www-lib.haifa.ac.il/www/subj/english.englit.html and for Mythology in Western Art: http://www-lib.haifa.ac.il/www/art/mythology_westart.html)