Bristol BioMed was conceived and developed as a transferable model that can be adapted for use in other environments and institutions. This flexibility has been achieved by employing standards such as Dublin Core metadata fields (ht.://purl.oclc.org/dc/about/element_set.htm ), the National Library of Medicine's Unified Medical Language Scheme(ht.://umlsks.nlm.nih.gov/), and Z39.50 search protocols. The presentation will emphasize the importance of using standards to unify data content, increase the possibility of interoperability acrosscompatible image collections and facilitate expansion and extensibility of systems.

The session will conclude by examining how Bristol BioMed is building on the success of the collection to increase the ways in which digital images are used within the biomedical learning and teaching domain. Feedback from users has indicated that, to exploit the visual and cognitive impact of an image fully, there is often a need to embed the image within a specific context, and to integrate it with overall teaching aims and strategies. The aim of this next phase of development is to demonstrate a range of practical uses for Bristol BioMed images and to create simple systems to allow users to incorporate those images with their own teaching practices.