A free national service that will enable lecturers, researchers and students to discover and access quality Internet resources will be launched today [Thursday 13 July] at an event in London at the Wellcome Trust. 

Intute is the new face of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) and exists to advance education and research by promoting the most intelligent use of the Internet.

This new service has been developed with a major contribution from teams in the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol. 

Lesly Huxley, Director of ILRT, said: “We are delighted to be part of this partnership which has built on existing expertise to provide a comprehensive and intuitive new service.”

Caroline Williams, Executive Director of Intute, said “The environment in which we operate is rapidly changing.  Issues of trust and quality are real concerns for our users, and we have responded to this by creating a new service which takes the best of the RDN and streamlines it into one easy to use interface.

“The Intute database makes it possible to discover the best and most relevant resources on the Internet.  You can explore and discover trusted information, assured that it has been evaluated by subject specialists.”

Intute is hosted by MIMAS at the University of Manchester and is a collaboration between seven universities, including the University of Bristol, supported by a network of partnerships with other universities and organisations.  Intute is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), with support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Intute is available at www.intute.ac.uk