JISC

As the use of the Internet increases and people use search engines to find information, academic librarians and their suppliers are looking at how they can adapt to the 21st century learner and become more agile.

A report published by JISC and SCONUL (Society for College, National and University Librarians) called ‘Library Management Systems: Investing wisely in a period of disruptive change’  is being used as a starting point to find common ground and develop priorities with vendors and librarians.

Professionals from across the library community met in London at the end of June 2008, to start the dialogue to collect issues, questions and tensions facing the sector.

Alison Allden, Deputy Registrar and Director of Information Services, University of Bristol and Chair of the JISC Integrated Information Environment Committee which commissioned the report, set the scene by raising the questions; ‘The service that we give to people in our universities, where is it going?’, ‘What is it that users want from us?’ and the ultimate goal for this consultation was to create ‘a community vision of how we take this forward’.

Anne Bell, the past chair of Sconul and Librarian at Warwick University acknowledged that as technology is enabling 24 hour access to information the existing library management systems ‘are clunky, not able to manage user workflows and there is a real threat of dislocation that users will go elsewhere’, if they are not able to use academic libraries in a way that suits their needs. Anne also reinforced the session was ‘a genuine consultation of how you (the sector) want to take this forward’.

Anne went on to pull out one of the findings from the report which was supported by the views of the attendees that ‘libraries needed to be more agile and responsive to meet a wider online role’. ‘Libraries needed to be more agile and responsive to meet a wider online role’

Discussions throughout the day were focussed on the users’ experience from personalised delivery to how to overcome the technology challenges of legacy systems and interoperability between other university systems.

With a variety of models being used from stand along library management systems to sharing services with best practise being sited at East Anglia as well as between Bath and Bristol higher education institutions.

The day ended with a strong discussion between the academic library community and suppliers as how best to take the challenge forward. Such as looking at those elements there were already in hand across different groups and those aspects that would need further action.

To find out more about the next steps of the consultation please contact Balviar Notay