Benefits of an all Wales Shared LMS

Wales Higher Education Library Forum (WHELF) is seeking greater collaborative amongst its members, in line with Welsh Government expectations.  It is easy to assume that collaboration and sharing of an LMS would drive down costs, increase efficiencies and provide improved services and user experiences, after all ‘many hands make light work’.  It is however worth looking in more detail at what the tangible benefits might be.

The working group identified the following attainable and forward looking benefits:

1. Birds of a feather and collective development; all Libraries in the consortium will be on the same LMS platform and version number.  This will allow collaboration on development initiatives.  Any partner will be able to put forward an identified User focused need or customisation.   This idea can be circulated within the consortium, if deemed appropriate, all or some of the members can collaborate on the design and development of the initiative.  They can share the financial and/or staff expenditure, reducing the cost of ownership for each individual institution involved.  This shared environment will also greatly facilitate the ability and opportunity to share in other ways without incurring the costs due tostandardisation of working platforms.

1. The next generation systems / platforms focus on efficient streamlined workflows, which will deliver efficiency savings.  By implementing an appropriate system there will be an amount of Staff time saving, which can be reinvested in other User facing tasks and services.  There is also the increased ability to adopt best practices across the consortium, or even pool resources to further improve efficiency.  There is much to be gained from sharing knowledge and expertise across libraries, learning from and supporting each other, forging new working relationships to better streamline workflows and make the maximum use of staff resource.

1. Cloud hosted systems are in most operations, monitored 24/7,  this plus the extra resilience provided by the cloud, will equate to more ‘up time’ and greater resilience.  This in turn leads to better experience of both Library Users and Library Staff.

1. Increased statistic gathering with collective print and e-resource management will help Library Managers make increasingly better informed decisions regarding services and collections.  The value of “big data” and business intelligence is increased when data is aggregated.  This is especially true when the aggregation is large scale using cloud based infrastructure.  For example, aggregated usage data would enable the identification of core resources both locally and nationally.  This could be used in joint procurement which would lead to broader and more appropriate resource provision for users.  However, it could also be used on a local level to ensure that collections closely match user needs, even if local usage data were scant. Data mining across multiple institutions’ data will provide the ability to determine patterns and will allow libraries to predict and respond to shifting service needs.

1. The sharing of testing at upgrade will reduce overall cost to each institution. There will also be an increased pool of knowledge and understanding across the consortium of the LMS which can be drawn upon.  This will lead to better utilisation of the product’s functionality and quicker implementation of best practice across the whole consortium. 

1. In the future, it would be possible to share services like acquisitions and cataloguing which would also lead to greater efficiencies and the option to reinvest Staff time and or financial resource into front line User services and opportunities. 

1. A shared LMS will make the sharing of resources easier.  There is potential for reciprocal borrowing amongst some or all members and also services such as inter-library loan may score highly with Users. In the future, the sharing of licensing agreements could provide more seamless access to the Library’s Users.  The assessment oflicences and central storage of this information will enable the swifter identification of conditions which can be exploited across all institutions.  For example, if a single institution identifies that a resource permits access to collaborative partner staff, and records this information in a shared ERM, all institutions with this resource would be able to extend access to those users. 

1. Partners will save resource / staff time in the procurement and selection process, through agreement of a single set of requirements, and through conducting a single (rather than multiple) tender and selection exercises.

 

There are likely also to be some more subtle and unexpected benefits of the sharing approach adopted by WHELF.  Within both the Academic and Library fields there is a long history of sharing for the greater good, this step towards facilitating the environment for such collaboration can only bode well for the future in this fast developing yet critical area.

 

 

 

Welsh Higher Education Libraries Shared LMS Services

 In July 2012 the Welsh Higher Education Libraries (WHELF) successfully obtained funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to explore the potential for a shared Library Management System across all higher education institutions and the NHS libraries in Wales.

The Library Systems Shared Services Feasibility Study (Wales) would provide a practical vision and roadmap for a shared model; exploring opportunities for integration and collaboration across the WHELF community.

The project was part of the JISC Library Systems Programme; which is exploring the significant changes in the Library systems market; including the development of ‘next-generation’, unified library systems which are seeking to bridge the gap between print and electronic resources, and the emergence of open source and community systems in the library market. 

Given the complexity of the programme across all WHELF institutions, and the limited timescale associated with the project, the group concentrated on the most prevalent and practical issues for a shared all Wales HE library management system in broad terms:

·     A set of high-level agreed consortium requirements for a shared LMS.

·     A proposed governance model for the consortium.

·     High level recommendations on integration requirements for local systems; map communications standards which are applicable to the project against standards in use by suppliers.

·     A business case for a Wales-wide consortium LMS, including cost matrices for the different approaches presented.

·     Recommendations on the most cost-effective approach for software, hosting and ongoing management of the LMS.

Approach 

The project took the approach of engaging with all project partners to understand their requirements and strategic goals for the development of their LMS.  The project manager visited each partner site and conducted interviews with key staff – including Systems Librarians and IT staff, senior managers and other library staff. 

The project has also engaged with LMS suppliers (including open source ‘vendors’) to understand their likely range and scale of costs for the provision of next generation systems, either hosted by the supplier or hosted at an institutional on behalf of the consortium. 

Project outcome and next steps

 In February 2013 the final report of the project including recommendations was presented to WHELF at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. 

The report was accepted in its entirety and WHELF have agreed that they want to pursue the option of developing a shared LMS inline with the reports recommendations.

 

Moving forward a Task and Finish group is being set up to agree the outline timescales  and decision-making process for the tender process. It will also firm up on likely overall costs and governance approach.

Recommendations taken forward

 The Project has recommended that setting up an All-Wales Consortium with formal governance is the best option for provision of a shared service.  This in practice will require the consortium to formally agree which processes, working practices and configurations will be adhered to by all members as a whole.   A cloud solution hosted by a vendor (or open source vendor) is the preferred option, because this will provide the most cost-effective resilient solution.  A clear vision statement on the vision for shared LMS services in Wales will be required in order to ensure clarity of purpose and to provide a compelling statement of intent for senior stakeholders and staff to achieve buy-in to the strategic direction proposed.

The diversity of the institutions is recognised and acknowledged.  Additionally institutions are at various stages of their LMS lifecycle.  Therefore it is understood that the timing of any tender process undertaken by WHELF may not fit with other strategic priorities of individual institutions.  It will be essential to identify this prior to the commencement of any tender exercise, as misleading suppliers as to the size of the contract could lead to compensation claims. 

Given the immaturity of the current next generation market it is recommended that the tender exercise commences in Jan 2014 at the earliest.  This provides both time for the market to continue to develop and also the preparation of a single set of requirements and tender documentation between now and this date. This time will also be required for obtaining institutional buy-in and developing governance structures. 

A phased approach to implementation. It is anticipated that the first implementations will be no sooner than Summer 2014.

A task and finish group should be convened to quickly put together a high level plan, costs and cost allocation (i.e. funding) for the establishment of a project team for delivery of the tender and governance stages.

Full report

 

Programme Manager appointed!

Welcome to Glyn Ryland who has now been appointed as the Programme Manager for this JISC Shared Library Systems Study.  Glyn will be picking up his new role from 10th Sept and I'll be handing over this blog to him!

 

 

Consortium governance arrangements

The project has been considering the governance arrangements which would need to be established for a shared library management system.  We've looked at a range of different consortial arrangements currently in place in the library sector, including the M25 Consortium in London, Seals (South Africa) and SWIFT (Australia).

What seems to be common about most of these arrangements is that they are quite formally constituted, legal entities, often with separate (charitable) status from their member institutions.  The Consortium may require dedicated staffing, it's own registered office, and an independent management and governance structure from the member bodies.

A consortium arrangement will almost certainly require a formal agreement between member institutions; this should cover things like the decision-making process, what to do if a decision cannot be agreed, process for joining and leaving the consortium, agreement on fees and costs and constitution.

What your consortium might look like will very much depend on the strategy for your system.  For example, a vendor-hosted solution would require a consortium arrangement which could hold the vendor to account for service levels and service quality.  If the solution is hosted by one of the partners, a formal service level agrement would then be required with that partner, and the other members would need to hold that partner to account for service delivery. 

In either case there would need to be agreement amongst Consortia members of the service levels required: for example, some members might be content with low levels of resilience and redundancy (and infact not able to afford more).  Others might demand quite high standards for these.  The Consortia would need to balance cost considerations with the strategic need for improved service quality and reliability.

 

Outline specification for a 'next-generation' Library Management System?

Ken Chad (Ken Chad Consulting Ltd) has made an outline specification for a 'next-generation' Library Management System available on a wiki at https://libtechrfp.wikispaces.com/Unified+library+resource+management+specification

This builds on and updates the 2007 core UK specification for an LMS.

Our project will be looking carefully at this outline spec over the next few weeks!

 

Defining project success

The project is contributing to the development of a new vision for Library Management Systems, as part of a wider JISC Programme.  We are focusing specifically on shared library systems and the potential for a shared library system across higher education in Wales.

The project needs to understand whether there is a business case for a shared Library Management System in Wales; part of this is developing an understanding of where the key benefits and costs lie.

Any such shared service would need to provide improvements to the user experience, and increase the functionality available across Welsh HEIs.

The project will be considered successful if we are able to deliver a robust business case which thoroughly addresses all the key issues around sharing a service; including costs, benefits, requirements for a shared service, value delivered, governance frameworks and the potential for deeper sharing of content and services.  The business case needs to be something which the Project Team can agree on, as being sufficiently robust to enable a common direction of travel to be agreed; and the Welsh HE Library Directors (WHELF) will also need to be confident that they can sign up to the business case and the recommended approach which emerges.

 

Emerging requirements for a shared library management system

We've recently held some requirements gathering workshops at Cardiff University for our Library Management System, with some very interesting ideas starting to emerge.

These sessions have so far been held for Library staff (including Library systems staff) and we need to do some further work on non-functional requirements, working with our technical staff. However, we've already started to identify some requirements for a hosted system which have been agreed at a University level as part of our recent tender exercise for email.

These can be seen as starting to fill the gap which was identified at the recent JISC Programme Meeting, which surfaced a number of more user-facing requirements, but didn't really touch on requirements for Library staff.

Staff are really keen to see simple and intuitive workflows in any new LMS - we received concerns about many of the current overly complex workflows, especially around Acquisitions processes, and the complexity of handling print and e-resources. 

There's also a real desire to see Library systems interfacing much more closely with other campus systems - especially student information systems and finance - preferably in realtime, to reduce the amount of manual and semi-automated data transfer and the amount of work which goes into maintaining things like patron databases and funds information.

Staff are also keen to see greater facilities and capacity for reporting and management information, with greater ability for non-Systems staff to develop and produce their own reports.  We'd like to see real-time data on a whole host of things, including 'top ten books borrowed by library', e-resources usage by School/user community, user searching behaviour etc.  These might feed into information and digital literacy strategies or collection management policies, or enable libraries to be more responsive to peaks and troughs in demand.

LMS systems should provide also greater integration with social media tools: with facilities for users to Tweet if they've just read a book (potentially with a recommendation), receive personalised lists of recommendations based on their interests and form networks and communities of interest around specific topics.

Other future functionality might include facilities for visual representation of collections, tools for management of digitisation under the CLA Licence, and potentially interfacing with RFID to provide more flexible alerting to users.

Some potential requirements for a shared system are also starting to emerge: 

• ability to cross-search the entire shared catalogue but also to present the 'local' catalogue as the first point of search.
• ability to pre-limit searches to specific collections across the shared catalogue.
• access to shared bibliographic (and other?) records across the consortium.
• shared reporting functions on collection (print and electronic) use.
• ability to share technical developments across the consortium (eg: mobile app development).
• User ability to search the nearest libraries.
• Libraries need to be able to define their own circulation policies within a shared system

 

 

JISC Programme Meeting July 2012

Here are some key points from the JISC Programme Meeting which took place in Birmingham on 13^th July 2012.  The hashtag for the Programme is #jiscLMS, for more detail.

There are 6 projects funded under the Programme – two of these are looking at shared Library Management Systems. We are focusing on Wales and there is also a project – ‘The Benefits of Sharing’ which is looking at the potential for a Scottish consortium.  There’s also an English consortium of the ‘Bloomsbury Universities’ (Senate House, Institute of Education, SOAS, Birkbeck, Royal Veterinary College, Royal College of Tropical Medicine) who are developing an M25 consortium, although this project is not directly funded under the Programme.  

There is an overarching synthesis programme – ‘LMS Change’ – which is aiming to pull together the key themes and strands across the Programme. 

The most interesting aspect of the Programme Meeting was a discussion session led by the ‘LMS Change’ folk to identify some key drivers for improvements to the LMS.  This focused on three different strands – technology, user requirements and institutional requirements.

Interestingly, the user requirements discussions focused pretty much entirely on end users, and not on Library staff; although Library staff are key users of any Library Management System.  I’m sure we were all thinking about Library staff requirements, but we didn’t have time to start to articulate any of these during the limited time available for discussion!  I’ll be posting more soon about some of the Library requirements which are starting to emerge from some of the discussions we’ve been having at Cardiff University.  We did discuss the increasing requirement to be able to collect, utilise and quickly react to trends in user data, in order to get better at being able to anticipate needs.  Currently it’s often difficult to get user data out of our systems in a quick and easy to manipulate manner, and we are missing opportunities to be able to better exploit this data.

There was also some interesting discussion around how our current systems may actually contribute to the information-seeking behaviour that we see in our users; poor user interfaces are driving our users to seek information through other channels such as Google.

On the technology side, we discussed the need for improvements to workflows, which need to be streamlined and simplified.  There were also some concerns raised about how interoperability with other key systems on campus can be achieved; especially given a possible hybrid cloud/local infrastructure model.  How do you get your institutional finance system to (safely) talk to and exchange data in real-time with your library system if one is in the cloud and one is behind an institutional firewall?  What if both are hosted in (separate) commercial clouds – does this make it easier or more complex?

Institutional priorities appear to be increasingly focused on the need to manage research data – with the Library system being seen as part of the jigsaw. Library systems will need to be capable of exchanging data with institutional research management systems, such as the CRIS (current research information system).v

 

Project Plan: Risk Matrix

Risk	Probability	Impact	Score	Prevention/Mitigation
Staffing not recruited in time for start of project	5	4	20	Project Team to initiate project
Lack of buy in from project members/stakeholders/institutions	1	5	5	Active engagement through Project working group and related activities
Lack of support/engagement from suppliers	2	5	10	Early engagement with suppliers has already taken place; including face to face meetings and in-depth discussion to ensure they understand scope and profile of the project; project manager will continue to actively engage with them through the life of the project.
Lack of engagement from JISC community with project outcomes	2	4ack of support from Welsh Governmentively engage with them through the life of the project. indepth discussion to ensure they u	8	Ensure report is sufficiently generic to be applicable to other consortial approaches
Lack of support from Welsh Government	2	3	6	Ongoing contact with CyMal via project manager built into communications plan
It proves impossible to agree levels of flexibility and institutional autonomy for a shared service, in a way which would realise the cost benefits of sharing	3	3	9	Workshop to thrash out ‘political’ and buy-in aspects and concerns for our institutions

 

Project Plan: Project Workpackages

Overall Timeline:

Work-packages	J	A	S	O	N	D
Work-package 1: Project management/communication	X	X	X	X	X	X
Work-package 2: Survey of existing practice and governance models	X	X	X
Work-package 3: Engagement with Synthesis and Scoping Project and wider project landscape	X	X	X	X	X	X
Work-package 4: Options appraisal and risk analyses	X	X	X	X
Work-package 5: Integration use cases		X	X	X	X	X
Work-package 6: Business case				X	X	X
Work-package 7: Evaluation and dissemination	X				X	X

 

Work-package 1: Project Management/Communication

Tasks	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
Receive Grant Letter and establish internal account structure	X
Commence recruitment of Project Manager	X
Complete recruitment and appoint Project Manager		X
Obtain signed consortium agreements from all project members: ·         Letter of agreement ·         Project Administration document	X	X	X
Establish Steering Group	X
Establish Working Group	X
Produce content for JISC website	X
Produce Project Plan	X
Produce internal communications plan for partners	X
Produce external communications plan for wider dissemination		X
Set up blog and other communication tools (including wiki for internal document sharing)	X
Monthly project reporting/progress monitoring	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Ongoing blog reporting	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Working Group Video Conferences	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Engagement with Programme	X	X	X	X	X	X	X

 

Work-package 2: Survey of existing practice and governance models

Tasks	J	A	S	O	N
Identify possible scenarios for a shared service: 1.       No change 2.       All Wales contract 3.       Shared system, hosted by an institution, content partitioned 4.       Shared system, hosted by an institution, content shared or partly shared 5.       Shared system, hosted by a 3rd party, content partitioned 6.       Shared system, hosted by a 3rd party, content shared or partly shared	X
Identify existing consortial approaches: ·         Contact via LMS suppliers, mailing lists etc	X
Develop sample scenarios for potential governance models	X
Contact consortia leads and interview to discuss governance approaches, benefits, approaches and issues (Phone/VC)	X	X
Run governance models workshop with consortia members			X
Identify and link to any existing use cases for consortial approaches	X
Produce use cases on consortia interviewed; seek permission to publish			X
Produce benefits analysis matrix			X
Produce governance outline model			X

 

Work-package 3: Engagement with Synthesis and Scoping Project and wider project landscape

Tasks	J	A	S	O	N	D
Project Team members to join Programme Mailing list	X
Attend Programme Meetings	X	X	X	X	X	X
Share plans with SCURL project (‘The Benefits of Sharing���) and agree on any areas suitable for joint working	X	X
Link to Synthesis and Scoping Project (LMS Change) as required	X	X	X	X	X	X

 

Work-package 4: Options Appraisal and Risk Analysis

Tasks	J	A	S	O	N	D
Obtain information from partners on the size of their databases; current functionality, integration requirements and staff licences	X
Conduct interviews and focus groups with project partner to build a list of requirements for the consortium (phone, VC and some visits)		X	X	X
Engage with LMS suppliers, Open Source providers and managed service providers to understand costs and business models for consortial next-generation systems		X	X	X
Workshop on ‘political’ issues and obtaining institutional buy-in			X
Identify infrastructure and software models available and cost the options			X	X
Build risk matrix and cost matrices based on various options				X

 

Work-package 5: Exploration of Integration Issues

Tasks	J	A	S	O	N	D
Identify technologies and communications standards used by suppliers/developers		X	X
Identify the key corporate systems which will need integration capability with the LMS; and level of integration options available		X	X
Engage with partner institutions to identify any technical/information architecture requirements for integration			X	X
Map likely workflows and data flows				X	X

 

Work-package 6: Business Case

Tasks	J	A	S	O	N	D
Produce business case				X	X	X
Produce recommendations				X	X	X

 

Work-package 7: Evaluation and Dissemination

Tasks	J	A	S	O	N	D
Produce evaluation and dissemination plan	X
Ongoing project dissemination	X	X	X	X	X	X
Produce evaluation as part of business case					X	X
Undertake dissemination activities required by JISC						X

 

 

Project Plan: Project Team

The project team members are as follows:

Project Director: David R Edwards
Assistant Director - University Technical Solutions Group
Information Services
Cardiff University, 39-41, Cardiff University, Park Place, Cardiff

Tel: +44 (0) 2920 870 883

Email: EdwardsD14@cardiff.ac.uk

Tracey Stanley

Deputy University Librarian and Assistant Director, Information Services, Cardiff University,

Arts & Social Studies Library

PO Box 430

Cardiff CF24 0DE

Tel: +44 (0) 29 2087 5693

Email: Stanleyts@cardiff.ac.uk

Mark Hughes

Head of Collections

Swansea University

Swansea Email: m.j.hughes@swansea.ac.uk

John Dalling
Senior Learning Resources Adviser
Learning Resources Centre
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
Carmarthen
SA31 3EP

Tel: +44 (0) 1267 676764

Email: J.Dalling@tsd.ac.uk

Mieko Yamaguchi

Head of Collection Management

Library & Archives Service
Bangor University
College Road
Bangor
Gwynedd
LL57 2DG

Tel: +44 (0) 1248 382970

Email: m.yamaguchi@bangor.ac.uk

Sue Stevens

Library Systems Manager

Information Services
Cardiff University

39-41, Cardiff University

Park Place

Cardiff

CF10 3BB

Tel: +44 (0) 29 2087 4706

Email: StevensS@cardiff.ac.uk

Helen Thomas

Central Services Librarian

Library Central Services Unit

Cardiff Metropolitan University

Western Ave, Cardiff CF5 2YB

Tel: +44 (0) 29 2041 6277

Email: hjthomas@cardiffmet.ac.uk

 

Project Working Group

The Project Working Group is now established and we had a very productive meeting on Monday 25th June.  Our project plan is coming together and we are putting together a data collection template to gather information from all the project partners on the following areas:

• current LMS suppliers and modules
• future requirements which have already been identified by the project partners
• size of our databases, numbers of staff licences, RFID and SIP2 requirements (for self-service)
• integration requirements with other institutional systems, such as Finance and Student Systems

We are also looking for examples of governance models from existing Library Systems consortia.

We've identified a number of possible scenarios for a shared system:

• no change
• Externally hosted system (either with content shared or partitioned)
• Institutionally hosted system (either with content shared or partioned)

We'll be setting up a team Wiki to share documents amongst project team members.

 

 

Project Plan: Aims and Outputs

Aims and Outputs:

This post outlines the main aims and outputs for the JISC Shared Services Library Management System Project.

The Library Management System (LMS) environment is rapidly changing, with a number of novel and innovative approaches to the ‘next generation’ LMS now starting to emerge.  The Project will address the requirements and financial and operational feasibility for a shared LMS across Wales, encompassing all Welsh HEIs, plus the Welsh NHS libraries currently supported by the Cardiff University LMS installation. 

The main goals of the Project are as follows:

• Produce a practical vision, set of requirements and a road-map for a future shared LMS infrastructure which would support Welsh HEIs and partners.

• Provide a comparison of infrastructure models, potential costs and ongoing support requirements for local versus regional versus international cloud hosting models.

• Provide a set of use cases and practical guidelines for integration with local systems such as Student Information Management systems and Finance systems.

• Provide a risk analysis of different software models and approaches – eg: open source, commercial-off-the-shelf, hybrid approaches; and delivery models – eg: local hosting, regional hosting, commercial cloud hosting.

• Develop a set of best practice guidelines for a governance structure for a consortial model.

• Develop a business case for a change of model from locally managed systems to a consortial approach.

The Project outputs are as follows:

• A set of high-level agreed consortial requirements for a shared LMS.

• A proposed governance model for the consortium.

• High level recommendations on integration requirements for local systems; map communications standards which are applicable to the project against standards in use by suppliers.

• A business case for a Wales-wide consortial LMS, including cost matrices for the different approaches presented.

• Recommendations on the most cost-effective approach for software, hosting and ongoing management of the LMS.

·         A road-map and timelines for potential implementation.

The Project success measures are:

• Successful engagement with a range of LMS suppliers (including open source providers and providers of managed services), which will enable us to understand the variety of models and approaches available to consortia, likely costs and ongoing management implications.

• Successful engagement with project partners and their key stakeholders; which will enable us to build a complete set of requirements for the consortium and obtain buy-in for proposed governance models; as well as obtaining buy-in from Senior Stakeholders for the future implementation of a consortial model.

• Successful engagement with the JISC Programme, which will enable opportunities for cross-Programme shared learning and collaboration, resulting in a higher quality overall Project output.

Benefits to the Sector and Host Institutions:

·         Full understanding of the ability of a consortial LMS to build on and deepen existing long-term collaboration between Welsh HEIs and partners; by sharing catalogues, software and infrastructure, systems expertise and staff time in innovative ways to benefit end users.

·         An opportunity to align ourselves with the Welsh Government For Our Future – The 21^st Century Higher Education Strategy and Plan for Wales agenda, which expects much greater collaboration across the Welsh HE sector.

·         Support for the Welsh Government Libraries Inspire strategy; and cross-pollination of best practice across sectors.

·         Models and approaches which can be applied to other consortia and regions looking to collaborate on LMS provision.

 

Welcome to the blog!

Welcome to this new blog for the JISC-funded Library Systems Shared Services Feasibility Study. JISC are funding the Welsh Higher Education Libraries Forum (WHELF) to undertake a short study (6 months) to develop a business case for a shared Library Management System across Welsh Higher Education Institutions and partners. This project includes all Welsh Higher Education Institutions. Further information about the JISC Programme can be found at http://infteam.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2012/05/30/the-future-of-library-systems-new-projects/. We will be posting more as we start to get the project underway.