Both workshops focus on the discovery of digital learning resources: one has a more technical focus on the infrastructure to enable the exchange and discovery of the content between different repositories, whereas the other one focuses on the social aspects of information retrieval such as ones related to social navigation, tags and recommenders.

The first International Workshop on Learning Object Discovery & Exchange (LODE 2007) calls out for contributions around issues on repositories, metadata and protocols for exposing content for its better discovery in terms of interoperable query languages, harvesting vs. federated searching, etc.

The other workshop, Social Information Retrieval for Technology-Enhanced Learning (SIRTEL07), on the other hand, ask whether "social" can help in finding resources. The idea “We use people to find content. We use content to find people.” is taken a step further to be adapted into pedagogical context to help teachers and learners find more suitable material and resources for their needs.

Both workshops are open for participants who are interested in following the presentations and discussion, as well as for those who wish to contribute a paper to the workshop. More information with deadlines and guidelines can be found from the websites:

More info:
LODE 2007: http://fire.eun.org/lode2007/

SIRTEL'07: http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/sirtel