Academic Libraries Across Scotland and Wales are Developing National Shared IT Services

From a JISC Blog Post:

Scotland and Wales have started to undergo work to develop shared library IT systems across their higher education institutions thanks to initial funding and support from Jisc.

Scotland

Higher education institutions in Wales are currently joining with the National Library of Wales to start development of a joint procurement process for a shared library management system. The shared system will open up potential opportunities for collaboration on other levels – including the possibility of reciprocal borrowing across the libraries and shared cataloguing of collections. They are looking to have these systems in place by summer 2015 – 2016 and a tender for the work will be going out in the New Year.

Learn More About the Project

Scotland

The first phase of the Scottish project, The Benefits of Sharing, has shown the benefits that a shared national IT support system could offer higher education and possibly further education institutional libraries. The key benefits include:

• All items from Scottish higher education institutional libraries and the National Library of Scotland being available and searchable to researchers and students, providing a higher quality service
• Supported procurement, making shared services cost effective, allowing more funds to be spent on resources.

Phase two of the work has now begun and the team are working with a task force at the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) to bring together a plan of what the service/systems would look like, for example what is included – room bookings, electronic support. They are hoping to have this is place by December and if a clear vision is developed a business plan will then be devised for implementation.
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Ben Showers, programme manager at Jisc explains:
“The collaboration on the development of library systems and services in Scotland and Wales has the potential to transform the experience of students and researchers who attend university in these countries. It is easy to imagine the possibilities – seamless access to a wide range of content and resources, through to innovative services built on top of this new infrastructure such as powerful recommendation engines and integration with teaching and learning systems.
“By collaborating on the essential infrastructure these universities are creating the resources and space that will enable them to develop the future services and systems that their students and researchers will need.”

Read the Complete Jisc Blog Post

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Funding, Libraries, Management and Leadership, News