A Word from the Director

Gateways to NIDRR's Disability Research

When the National Center for the Dissemination of Disability Research (NCDDR) began its work in the summer of 1995, approximately twenty percent of NIDRR's grantees had World Wide Web (WWW) sites. Today, in the summer of 1997, over half of all NIDRR grantees have active WWW sites. Approximately 20 percent (25 out of 130 grantees) of the remaining grantees indicate that they have plans to establish a WWW site in the next 12-month period.

First of all, one has to be struck with the rate of growth of WWW sites among NIDRR grantees. With the majority of grantees "up" on the WWW, a new set of opportunities for the dissemination of disability research information present themselves. Second, the rate of growth is phenomenal when considering that, for the most part, this growth has been at the option of the grantee. In other words, few NIDRR funding priorities have required the applicant to develop a WWW site. Rather, it is the case that applicants have viewed a presence on the WWW to have its own benefits and it has often become an applicant's option in developing a more competitive proposal. It is also the case that many current NIDRR grantees have developed WWW sites without mention of such sites in their original proposal.

The proliferation of the WWW and grantees' sites on the WWW brings challenges in effectively organizing NIDRR-funded disability research information. The NCDDR-with its mandate to increase dissemination of NIDRR grantee research results-is in the process of developing NIDRR Disability Research Topics Gateways. While the pioneering efforts of this work are using the WWW as the primary medium, the accumulated disability research information will be made available in multiple formats and will be sorted for use in many different ways. This issue of The Research Exchange highlights the work to date of the NCDDR on these doorways. It is my hope that as these doorways take shape, individual NIDRR grantees will see how pieces of their work/results can fit into the larger informational system and will bring it forward to the NCDDR staff for inclusion.

Our common challenge into the future is to make NIDRR's disability research information as accessible and available as possible. In this new age of the WWW, it does not matter where the electronic information may be "housed." What does matter is whether a potential user will have to diligently investigate and try many non-useful alternatives before arriving at the information needed. The NCDDR does not intend to duplicate what any other NIDRR grantee has established via their website. The NCDDR does hope to centralize NIDRR's disability research information in a new way that is helpful and useful to consumer and researcher alike.

John D. Westbrook, Ph.D.
Director, NCDDR

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