The ‘library management system’: a round up of some (fairly) recent initiatives
This is rather a long post - but it is on a big subject!
Last year saw the publication by the JISC and SCONUL of a major report on library management systems used in UK higher education. A lot has happened since. So, I thought it might be useful to post an update - even a long one - on some related recent JISC activities.
The LMS report highlighted a number of issues to be addressed in order to make library resources as visible and accessible as possible in the digital environment, including:
• integrating library systems and other university systems so that relevant data can be shared between them and users can access services in different ways (within university portals, virtual learning environments, etc.)
• making library metadata (catalogue records) available to other services (such as web search engines and collaborative web tools) so that information about library resources can be easily found, used and personalised by users where and how they choose
• using library usage data (information about how many times an item has been borrowed and by what kind of user, for example) to indicate how individual library resources are being used, thereby providing a basis for user ‘rating’ for library resources – and doing this at a ‘network level’ (so not limited to one library) in order to have access to enough meaningful data
• improving the quality of search interfaces and reducing the number of different systems which users need to search to access the full range of resources available to them.
JISC is just one partner in seeking to address these issues with vendors of library systems developing new discovery tools, OCLC’s recent announcement about using WorldCat as the basis for effectively a shared library management system and SCONUL investigating the potential for shared library management systems, for example.
So, what has been happening on the JISC front?
The TILE (Towards Implementation of Library 2.0 and the e-Framework) project has investigated the use of Web 2.0 tools by library services, outlined a possible new model (a ‘library domain model’) for how library services might fit in the wider information environment (to help inform further development of library systems) and proposed testing the extraction and combination of usage data from a number of university systems to provide the bases of user ratings for library resources.
As you may know from some earlier posts, reports from the TILE project are now available on the JISC web site and there is a workshop on the domain model planned for June 19. Further work is planned to test extracting and combining usage data as noted above.
Meanwhile, EDINA and MIMAS are developing the search interfaces for SUNCAT (the national serials catalogue) and COPAC (the national research libraries’ catalogue) as part of the D2D (Discovery to Delivery) project. The work includes providing Web 2.0 and other tools to enable users to share metadata and to link from bibliographic records to ‘the thing itself’ (or a means of obtaining it). The project partly builds on the recommendations and findings of the DPIE (Development of Personalisation for the Information Environment) investigations of 2008.
Continuing the theme of ‘joining up’, the JISC Scholarly Communications Working Group recently commissioned a study into the existing and potential links between library management systems and digital repositories.
And the winning entry at the recent Dev8D Web Developers event was a prototype reading list system which aimed to make it easier to extract information for reading lists from catalogues, Amazon and elsewhere and then make the reading lists available in different applications.
Following the major ‘Google generation’ report of early 2008, efforts also continue to understand what information services people actually need with the launch of a new British Library/JISC study of young researchers’ use of online and physical information environments. JISC’s Publishers’ Action Group has also commissioned an observational study of how individual students and academic staff in Business and Economics use electronic information resources.
So, there is a lot going on - and that is just within a JISC context. If nothing else, the activity in this area illustrates that the ‘library management system’ is even more the subject of debate than it was when the JISC/SCONUL study was commissioned not so very long ago …
A technical challenge for a Friday afternoon
We have had an interesting technical challenge posed by Chris Rusbridge, Director of the DCC relating to marking JISC bids and wondered if any of you clever people out there could come up with a solution.
For the jiscri call we received 94 bids each of these has to be marked by 3 markers, the marking process has approximately 5 sections with comments. That is a lot of data to process so an online submission system is essential. We use a web form for this. However, lots of our markers are mobile and entering marks directly into the web form is not convenient so the markers prepare their marks and comments offline and then add them to the web form at a later date. JISC provides a standard spreadsheet to help people make notes.
Copying comments and marks from the cells in the spreadsheet into the individual boxes on the web form is a time consuming and dull task and Chris is keen to find an automated way to do this.
I had a look at this myself last night and got halfway to a quick and dirty solution. Since the webform doesn’t have an API, I figured the easiest way to speed things up will be to make the pasting process easier. This can be done with enhanced clipboard systems such as ditto or clipdiary. However, getting the individual cells from the spreadsheet as unique entries on the clipboard in the correct order is a problem I couldn’t solve.
So over to you. Is there a way to use the clipboard solution to make Chris’ task easier or is there an altogether more elegant solution? Chris’ deadline is 10am Monday 11th May so answers before then would make Chris happy.
Here is a dummy example of the webform (it is from a completed marking process): http://survey.jisc.ac.uk/einfevaluation
I have put an example spreadsheet on google docs the text in the yellow boxes is what needs to be copied.
The way in which JISC bids are managed and marked is under review in the JISC policy department and they are looking for a manageable yet user friendly approach. This challenge is not part of that process so we are not looking for suggestions for different marking systems here, it is purely a technical challenge that happens to be related to marking.
We may be able to send a small gift to the most elegant solution but surely making Chris happy is the main prize here.
Repositories and Preservation programme meeting - Day 2
Neil Grindley introduces day two of the Repositories and Preservation Programme Meeting in Birmingham:
The tag for the meeting is rpmeet. Follow on twitter
Repositories and programme meeting - liveblog
The link below will take you to the liveblog for the Repositories and preservation programme meeting
Repositories and preservation programme meeting
This live blog will bring together tweets about this discussions happening at the forum session at the programme meeting.
The forum will consist of two tables and will discuss the following topics:
- 4-4.30 What role for repositories as part of an institutional research information management infrastructure
- 4.15-4.45 Where next for repositories and learning and teaching materials
- 4.30-5.00 How can text minig support repository tasks
- 4.45-5.15 What is the scale of of the problem in relation to sharing research data
- 5-5.30 Sustainability and institutional impact: how can we exploit the value of innovation projects?
Close of the repositories and preservation programme
The repositories and preservation programme is coming to an end and over the next two days we will be gathering all the projects together for a final meeting to think about what we have learned and where we are going next with repositories and preservation.
This blog will be used to gather outputs from the event.
First up we have Neil Grindley introducing the event and talking about what will happen on the first day.
Of course there is already further work going on in this area. The Information Environment Programme 2009-11 (tag: inf11) has started and the projects in that programme are just getting going. You can read all about them on the JISC website.