A presentation about the Jisc 'The Benefits Of Sharing' given at the Scottish Digital Library Consortium's (SDLC) AGM on the 6th February 2013.

1. THE BENEFITS OF
SHARING

2. The Benefits Of Sharing (TBOS)

3. http://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/benefitsofsharing/

5. JISC Grant Funding 01/12
“The aim of this work is to contribute to a new
vision for library systems and provide concrete,
practical examples of work that might help
contribute to the creation and implementation
of that vision.”
Appendix D2: Library Systems (Information and Library Infrastructure) – Pathfinder projects

6. JISC Grant Funding 01/12
“JISC invites projects to undertake work under
one of the following broad themes:
Shared library systems
Emerging tools and technologies
Emerging library systems opportunities”
Appendix D2: Library Systems (Information and Library Infrastructure) – Pathfinder projects

7. JISC Grant Funding 01/12
“Projects should see themselves as a stepping
stone toward a different future for library
systems.
While the project may be time limited and
contained, the opportunities and potential
vision for a future library system should not.”
Appendix D2: Library Systems (Information and Library Infrastructure) – Pathfinder projects

9. The Benefits of Sharing
This proposed project seeks to contribute towards a
new vision for library systems by investigating the
following question:
“How would a shared library management system
improve services in Scotland?”
This will be achieved by a project team backed by
the Scottish Confederation of University and
Research Libraries (SCURL), and led by the
University of Edinburgh Library.

10. The Benefits of Sharing
There are several aspects to this question that will be investigated:
Services – how do different groups of users benefit from shared content and
systems, and are there any complications introduced from such sharing?
Systems – how far can a shared system sensibly reach, do suitable solutions
exist that can be shared and that scale appropriately, and to what extent is a
local view of a shared system required or possible?
Content – how common are the current content holdings, licences and
cataloguing practises across the libraries in Scotland that would help or
hinder deeper sharing?

11. Work Package 1: Looking Ahead
• LMS Day: 5th October 2012
– 33 Scottish university library staff
– Not constrained by current LMSs
– Facilitated event
• Steph Taylor
• Sheila Cannell
– Hosted by University of Stirling

12. LMS Day
• What do we need from an LMS?
– Acquisitions
– Circulation
– Cataloguing
– Patron database
– InterLibrary Loans
– Discovery
– Content delivery mechanisms

13. LMS Day
• In light of the previous discussion, what is
your perfect LMS (or way of managing the
workflows conventionally handled by the
LMS)?
• Consider both the front and back ends of any
system. Do you want changes to the front end,
aimed more at users? To the back end, which
would probably be ‘invisible’ to users? Or to
both?

14. LMS Day
• What might a Digital University Library of Scotland offer us?
– A Digital University Library of Scotland would offer seamless access to
everything for everyone.
– Working on a shared LMS would present the perfect opportunity for
introducing cultural change and rethinking the way we all do things, but the
ease of transition would need careful and effective management to work.
– Policies are very important to making a shared LMS work. Senior management
support is essential in making this happen in a workable, practical way.
– A ‘blank sheet of paper’ approach is needed – we need to clear away the
historical ideas, ways and reasons for how we do things and start afresh.
– We would benefit a single classification system within a shared LMS – could
we agree on this? Would it be possible?
– The SHEDL approach was given as an example of how co-operation and shared
services/purchasing can work.

15. LMS Day
• What could be shared?
– Are there any particular areas that would benefit
from being shared?
– Are there any particular areas where sharing
might be a drawback?
– How might this work? What are the pros and cons
of making a shared LMS work?

16. LMS Day
• Would a shared LMS work for Scotland?
– Question 1: It’s 2018, and universities in Scotland
have a shared LMS. How will this feel?
• For users, universities, librarians, the Scottish government
– Question 2: What preparation does the Scottish HE
library community need to start making NOW to make
a shared LMS succeed?
– Question 3: What are the barriers to a shared LMS in
Scotland, and why hasn’t it happened already

17. LMS Day
• The final vote:
– Do you want a shared LMS for Scotland?
• 29 people wanted a shared LMS for Scotland, 3 people
didn’t, and one person didn’t vote on this question.
– Do you think a shared LMS for Scotland would
work?
• 24 people thought a shared LMS for Scotland would
work, 9 people didn’t think it would work.

18. Work package 2: Users
• If a shared LMS were to emerge in Scotland, in
whatever form it may take, would it enrich the
user experience and benefit users as well as
institutions?
• Vox-pop survey:

19. Work package 2: Users
• If a shared LMS were to emerge in Scotland, in
whatever form it may take, would it enrich the
user experience and benefit users as well as
institutions?
• Vox-pop survey:

20. Work package 2: Users

21. Work package 2: Users
• Scotland’s consortia landscape – case studies:
– Scottish Digital Library Consortium
– Glasgow Colleges
– Rowan partnership
– SEDAR Consortium
– Find a Book
• “All existing LMS sharing has been driven by the
prospect of impending system migration and cost
saving.”
• “No existing shared LMS service has tackled sharing
access to resources.”

22. Work package 3: Systems
• Scottish Systems landscape
– Voyager (7)
– Alto (6)
– Millennium (4)
– Aleph (3)
– Symphony (3)
– Sierra (1)
– Liberty (1)
– Evergreen (1)

23. Work package 3: Systems
• We purchased Voyager in 1999, but the world
has changed!
– Search and discovery interfaces
– Link resolvers
– Reading lists
– VLEs
– Repositories
– ILL solutions

24. Work package 3: Systems
• New options: Kuali OLE
– Bloomsbury group ‘decision in principle’
• The market for Next Generation Library Systems (Library
Services Platforms) is not yet sufficiently mature to enable
most Scottish libraries to make an informed decision, and may
not be for another 18-24 months.

25. Work package 4: Content
• Content report
– How much of our content is shared or duplicated?
– SHEDL, NESLI, etc
• The effect of Open Access content?
• KB+

26. Work package 4: Content
• Bibliographic data survey

27. Work package 4: Content
• Bibliographic data survey:
– “Determining, with any degree of accuracy, the unique
titles within the shared collection will require much
deeper analysis of the collections than this project
allows, but we do have some guidance through the
OCLC’s analysis of the Scottish print collection across a
limited number of Scottish universities, published in
2011. The report analysed the collections of ‘ancient’
Scottish universities, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh
and St. Andrews alongside the NLS. The general
overlap pattern of that collections suggested that 82%
of the collections of those institutions was made up of
works held by one institution.”

28. Work package 4: Content
• Bibliographic data survey:
– “Interestingly, the OCLC report also analysed the
collection against the digitised collection of the Hathi
Trust, a collection of some 5.5 million titles. At that
time, 978,183 titles from the ‘Scottish collection’ were
digitised in that collection. The growth of the Hathi
Trust’s digitsed collection and the possibility of having
other Scottish HE collections compared with that
collection might suggest that that figure would be
higher today and represents a significant collection of
material that could be made available digitally to the
community.”

29. Work package 4: Content
• Bibliographic data survey:
– “The data gathered on patrons can only provide a
snapshot of the number of patron records currently
being managed. The issue overlap is more limited in
this area as the number of patrons enrolled with more
than one HEI will be relatively small, though a
significant number of the NLS patrons might well be
students and staff of Scottish HEIs.
Therefore, what we can reasonably say that a patron
database of over 350,000 people, or approximately
7% of the Scottish population, are managed within
LMS systems of Scottish HE.”

30. Work package 5: Evaluation
• Summary Report – in preparation

32. Jisc’s next steps
• TBOS viewed in context of other projects:
– WHELF: The business case for sharing
– Bloomsbury group: LMS System options
– TBOS: The benefits of sharing
• LMS event in a few months to consider all the
projects

33. SCURL’s next steps
• Establish a small task and finish group to take this forward to the next
stage. This proposal does not assume that the shared service will go
ahead not commit SCURL or any of the members to join such a shared
service. The main tasks of the group are proposed to be as follows:
– Timetable
– Resources
– Exploratory Work
– Vision
– SCURL and institutional level decision to go to next stage (or not)
– Planning
– SCURL and institutional level decision to go to implementation (or not)
– Formal commitment by those proceeding
– Group is replaced by an implementation group

34. Photo credits
• “Tape drive”:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pyntofmyld/44
88018774
• “Sharing”:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/micahtaylor/60
36026737
• “This way next”:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amslerpix/7959
123252
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.