ALTO Filestore User Guide

Screen shot of the Filstore Homepage

The user guide is now available from this link http://alto.arts.ac.uk/913/

The guide is written in such a way that it assumes you read it in the order it is written, after that you can use it as a quick reference. It will probably be best if you print this guide and refer to it as you work through using the Filestore. The illustrations are collected together in a separate file (to make future updates easier) so it will make sense to have them printed separately and refer to them. If you are using the online version of the guide in PDF format it will be easier to have the guide open in two windows - one for the text and one for the illustrations.

Visit the Filestore website http://alto.arts.ac.uk/filestore

What is the Filestore?

As the name suggests it is a place to store and share files, it is great for storing and sharing finished works and your own work in progress too, it's like having your own personal long-term digital library and archive, where you are in control. In fact, the whole design of this software tool is based on the metaphor of a library, with the use of catalogue information to manage the various resources that users deposit in the system.

How the ALTO Filestore Relates to Process.Arts and the rest of the ALTO System

Visit the ALTO website http://alto.arts.ac.uk/

When the ALTO project started at the UAL we decided, learning from hard experience elsewhere, that just providing a digital library system (no matter how good) would not be enough. It was going to be crucial to also support the social collaborative and communicative activities relating to the design, development, sharing and reuse of learning resources. As a result we came up with the idea of an 'ecosystem' made up of technical services, policy development and online and offline social spaces that work together to deliver a growing community of sharing across the UAL.

The original ALTO project spotted an existing UAL initiative called Process.Arts, which was successfully fulfilling the online social space function we needed, so we invested a small amount of money in upgrading the site, this has since been growing rapidly and has been nominated for several awards and is now part of the ALTO system - hence the ALTO logo at the top of the Process.Arts web page. Policy development came in the form of the UAL legal department accepting the use of Creative Commons licences on the sites - a big step forwards. Recognising that lots of existing open content is already on UAL websites we developed the simple concept of having partner sites who affiliate to ALTO. Visit the ALTO website http://alto.arts.ac.uk/