13th July 2006 saw the launch of Intute. Beginning life as a grass roots community of information professionals working on individual projects, Intute was the result of years of evolution and development, and has now matured into a fully integrated and widely used national service.
Our origins lie in the 1996 Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme, where a number of librarians and researchers won JISC funding to develop their ideas for new Internet gateway services. Later these subject services joined together to create the Resource Discovery Network (RDN).
In 2003, we found a new home within Mimas at The University of Manchester, and a new phase of developments began. In response to user needs and the changing environment, Intute was launched in 2006; a single organisation with a unified culture, interface, technological platform and identity. Since 2006, the Intute team, through community engagement, have continued to develop the service whilst remaining committed to making the most intelligent use of the Internet for education. Today you see Intute designed to be more student focused, structured around university course subjects, with a greater emphasis on helping students to develop Internet research skills.
More information:
For a detailed history of the RDN, please see the retrospective of the RDN by Debra Hiom, which charts the development of subject gateways in the UK since 1993.
Intute was created in response to users' needs and the changing Internet information environment. The article Intute: the New Best of the Web by Caroline Williams gives more information about this.
A history of the Virtual Training Suite by Emma Place, is also available.
