Some supporting information for Call 12/09 on library management systems
This Call is NOT affected by the temporary freeze on new JISC capital funding commitments announced on January 5 as it is funded from JISC’s core budget for 2009/10.
We’ve brought some supporting information together here on call 12/09 on enhancing library management systems.
Read the call and post a query about specific section(s) using WRITE TO REPLY.
The ‘official’ text of the Call is available on the JISC WEB SITE.
View PRESENTATION (11 minutes) outlining the Call (hosted on Screentoaster).
The following ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ highlight specific parts of the call.
Information specific to this call
Who’s eligible? - paragraphs 5-6
What are the priority areas? – Overview in paragraph 1; detail in paragraphs 24-64
What kind of deliverables are we looking for? - This depends on which area you are addressing. See paragraphs 29, 43, 51 & 62
What user engagement do I need to include in my bid? – see the paragraphs on deliverables above
What are the deadlines for submitting bids and getting feedback? – paragraphs 103 and 115
What are the project timescales? - paragraph 3
Who do I contact for further information? - paragraph 4
Standard bidding information
How do I structure a bid? - paragraph 70
How do I format and submit a bid? - paragraphs 102-113
Is there a checklist for submitting a bid? - paragraph 122
When will I hear about my bid? - paragraph 119
What about staff recruitment? - paragraph 65
What about partnerships and consortia? – paragraphs 6 and 68
How does this relate to other JISC work? - paragraphs 21-22
What other projects and work do we need to be aware of? - paragraphs 11-19 in general and, then for specific areas, paragraphs 30, 44, 53
What about software licences? - paragraphs 77-78
Where can I find out more about fEC and TRAC? – paragraphs 86-91, Appendix C
Do I need to worry about FoI? - paragraphs 92-94
What are the terms and conditions attached to the funding? – paragraphs 95-97
Will I need to attend lots of meetings? – paragraph 71 and note paragraphs 29, 43, 51, 62 for the individual areas
What are the IPR conditions? - paragraphs 77, 78, 98-100
These are just the points we came up with, Twitter or post a comment on this blog if you have other suggestions that we should add here.
Remember to tag any tweets and blogs with jisclms
Happy Christmas 2009
Wishing you a Happy Christmas and all best wishes for the New Year!
Repositories and preservation programme - evaluation
From 2006-2009 JISC ran the repositories and preservation programme. This represented a 14 million pound investment in repositories to store the outputs of research and learning, the preservation of those outputs and the infrastructure and technologies necessary to manage this large scale curation of content. Full details of this programme and the 92 projects associated with it can be found on the jisc website.
We have recently received the evaluation report from the programme evaluators Evidence Base. The report can be found in the Information Environment repository. The report provides a good overview of what was acheived in the programme. However since the report is 98 pages long and few people outside of JISC will be interested in it in its entirety we thought it would be a good idea to summarise the report in a series of posts on this blog.
The posts will appear over the next few weeks and will address the following areas:
- Repositories
- Tools and innovations
- Standards and interoperability
- Shared infrastructure services
- Preservation
- Conclusions and the future
More information on the forthcoming ‘library systems’ call
We’ve now agreed the broad outline of the ‘library systems’ call which we hope to publish before Christmas.
This call will invite proposals for case studies/projects in four different areas:
Use of new library resource discovery interfaces
Case studies of implementing and using one of the ‘newish’ library resource discovery interfaces (such as Primo, VuFind or Summon). Case studies must include an evaluation of the system and usability testing with users.
Enhancing existing Web catalogue interfaces
Projects which enhance existing Web catalogue interfaces through adding user ratings, resource recommendations etc. The best known UK example here is probably HUDDERSFIELD.
Making library resources and services visible beyond library Web environments
Projects which create widgets and/or portlets to provide access to library resources and services from within institutional and/or social Web environments, such as VLEs or Facebook respectively. The LSE LIBRARY is one existing example.
Case studies exploring problem areas with existing library management systems
The ‘problem areas’ with many existing library management systems are well known and include management of electronic information resources and no or little integration with other institutional systems. The purpose of these case studies would be to document specific difficulties encountered in these problem areas by individual libraries and also any ‘work arounds’ which people have found to overcome them.
These case studies will then feed into a series of workshops to explore each of the problem areas. This process is intended to (a) facilitate information sharing on the practical difficulties which libraries are encountering and any work arounds found to help overcome them; (b) inform thinking on libraries’ future systems needs by illustrating and documenting specific problems with current systems.
As you can see, most of this call is focussed on the ‘here and now’ of library management systems rather than the really big question. What sort of systems do library need to compete in the digital environment and where they are going to come from?
There are a few reasons for this ‘here and now’ focus:
Firstly, the funding available (and funding period which applies) means that projects need to be short (six months) and, therefore, not too ambitious.
Secondly, the longer term picture is being addressed elsewhere:
- SCONUL is currently conducting a FEASIBILITY STUDY into UK university libraries sharing systems in the future and this will report in the near future (to HEFCE as this work was funded by HEFCE as part of its shared services initiative). While future decisions and funding in this area are unknown, this study has identified potential for shared systems. This study could, therefore, be significant for the shape of the UK university library systems environment in the future;
- a JISC/RLUK ‘Resource Discovery Task Force’ is reviewing what national resource discovery services are needed for the future. This will report in early 2010;
- the OLE PROJECT in the United States is currently seeking funding to build an entirely new, open source library system based on a technical model which it has drawn up;
- some library systems vendors are also working on new ‘technical architectures’ for library systems.
Thirdly, developing new systems will take considereable time and effort, be that by systems vendors or the open source community. In the meantime, libraries need to make the most of the systems they have.
However, the case studies exploring problem areas are relevant to the SCONUL shared services initiative and it is hoped that they will support that process.
Finally, you may be familiar with the work of the MOSAIC PROJECT which has been working on aggregating ‘activity data’ from library systems to form the basis of resource recommendations (Economics students who borrowed this item also borrowed x, y, z item, for example). This call does not include further work on aggregating such data because such a process requires central co-ordination and management and this does not lend itself to a call for proposals of this kind. However, development of resource recommender systems by individual libraries is in scope under ‘Enhancing existing Web catalogues’ above.
The outline timescales for the call are:
- publish mid-December
- deadline for proposals in early February
- projects start in mid-April
- projects end in mid-October
Please note that these timescales could change.
Because these projects/case studies will be short, project staff must already be in place at the start of the work. Consortial bids are not expected or encouraged due to the short timescales and the nature of the work areas.
When the call is published it will be available from the FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES area of the JISC Web site and advertised on the JISC ANNOUNCE mailing list.
We are not planning to have a ‘town meeting’ for this call. However, we will be making additional information about the call available online, together with ways for people to post queries about specific parts of the call.
The tag to use for online discussion about the call is ‘jisclms’