Pictured above: (l-r) Jeff Moore, Chief Executive of emda with Professor Babck Yazdani, Dean of Nottingham Business School

East Midlands Development Agency (emda) has signed a unique agreement to transfer its knowledge legacy to Nottingham Trent University.

emda will be closing in March 2012, and in order to ensure that the knowledge created through the Agency's activities can continue to be made available to partners including Local Authorities and Local Enterprise Partnership (LEPs), it has established the emda Knowledge Bank in conjunction with Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University.    

The Knowledge Bank contains a suite of Legacy Handbooks produced by emda. These provide details of emda's focus and achievements across a range of policy and delivery areas. The handbooks also highlight the lessons learnt by emda in its work, which the Agency hopes will be helpful to future policy makers and delivery bodies.

In addition, the Knowledge Bank also contains a wide range of strategies, policy and research studies, toolkits, and a number of reports focused on the Agency's progressive approach to economic impact evaluation.

Nottingham Business School is hosting the Knowledge Bank online as part of Nottingham Trent University's Institutional Repository (IRep) for at least 10 years - ensuring that it is a publicly available resource, accessible through Google and other search engines. 

emda's Knowledge Bank is the first ever external collection to be included in the IRep, which enables the University to share its research and intellectual outputs both internally and externally, and visitors to the website will be able to browse and search the archive by the type of document and the theme it relates to.

Speaking about the creation of the Knowledge Bank, Jeff Moore, Chief Executive of emda, said: "Since emda was established in 1999, we have achieved significant results and learnt a huge amount as a result of all our work. We feel it is vitally important that our knowledge is made available to people who are going to be involved in future economic development activity, and therefore I am delighted that our Knowledge Bank is being hosted by Nottingham Trent University."

Professor Baback Yazdani, Dean of Nottingham Business School, added: "Nottingham Business School is a leading force in research excellence which has a real impact on business and the economy, so we are well placed to host the Knowledge Bank. We are planning to collaborate with other public and private organisations to expand this important knowledge base, which includes a great array of economic and environmental assessment and strategies developed, implemented and evaluated by emda.

"We will also take advantage of this knowledge to develop and help to implement evidence-based policies to support the local and national economy, and Nottingham Business School researchers will use it to advance Economic Development theory and practice. Crucially, the material contained in the Knowledge Bank will also be utilised in our teaching, which uses the latest thinking to develop future policy makers and leaders."