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 …
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Good list.
I think there is a lot of change on the horizon (much of which was alluded to in the original report but has since developed somewhat)
- The open source ILS (LMS) have had huge take up in public (mainly US) libraries, when will them reach a point that academic libraries start to implement them. Some thoughts..
- The notion of the catalogue is changing. If you separate the back-room mainly books MARC based catalogue, and the web based public search (for all resources). They really have different needs and should contain different items. Should e-journals/books be on a traditional ILS MARC catalogue. Do all the things a front end searches need the same level of metadata? I think this separation is essential, and of course already happening (Primo, aquabrowser, summon).
See some further thoughts on this: http://sn.im/hsay4 & http://sn.im/hsay4
- Ex Libris’ URM : merging E-resource management with the rest of the ILS
- moving to a modula design (the un-ils?). Happening to an extent with next gen catalogues and SIP2 allowing ‘lending desks’ to use different software to the ILS itself. but I think lots of potential here. Everyone at a Uni uses one purchasing system, except the library which uses its own ILS acq system, which basically replicates the purchasing system. Why? What makes the library special? Which can’t the library use the same system as everyone else, with the purchasing system informing the ILS of a new purchase. Of course there are details and complications (eg serials) but I think this is the road we should be heading down. The OLE Project is interesting to watch http://oleproject.org/
- the need for common and open standards is becoming greater. What good is a next gen catalogue if the user has to swap to a traditional catalogue for renewing/reserving (seperate logon, interface, difficult to navigate back to ngc). We need standards to avoid this sort of thing. While there are many standards for bib data, holdings data is harder to access (either z39.50 or screenscraping, both yuck!).
Cheers
Chris