Presentation given at the jisc Library Systems Workshop on the WHELF shared library systems project, July 15th 2013.

1. Towards a shared
Library Management
System for Wales
Glyn Ryland, Cardiff University
1

2. Context
• WHELF Strategy
• WHELF/CyMAL Report in 2011.
• JISC LMS Programme
• Funding awarded June 2012 for 6 month study
• Study completed March 2013
• JISC Programme covers:
• WHELF Shared Services study
• Scottish Shared Services study
• Engagement also with Bloomsbury (London colleges) shared
systems project
2

3. What we’ve discovered
3

4. Benefits: birds of a feather
• All libraries use same
version of LMS
• Separate instances, but
single upgrade path
• Shared development
and testing
• Share costs of
customisation and
bespoke development
• Greater leverage with
single supplier
4

5. Benefits: streamline workflows
• Improved workflow
generates improved
efficiency
• Free up time to focus
on new and
emerging demands
(open
access, research data
management)
5

6. Benefits: resilience
• Cloud-based
infrastructure
• More ‘up time’
• Enterprise-level
infrastructure.
• Redundancy
• Reduce the pain of
upgrade, patching
etc.
6

7. Benefits: business intelligence
• Real-time reporting on
usage of collections
and e-resources
• Easier access to
management
information to aid
decision making
• Aids shared decision-
making across Wales
HE and NHS
• Joint purchasing etc?
7

8. Sharing and Collaboration
• Catalogue records?
• Electronic resource
management?
• Licence management?
• Management information?
• Inter-Library loans?
• Physical access
arrangements?
• Reciprocal borrowing?

9. Key benefits for users
• Potential ability to
search across
collections in Wales
HE and NHS from
single point of entry.
• Smaller organisations
can potentially
expand their
services.
9

10. Benefits: procurement process
• Greater bargaining
power in supplier
negotiations.
• Potential to leverage
savings on licensing
and implementation
through joint
procurement.
• Staff time saved in
procurement. 10

11. Proposed model
• Consortium ‘with
Governance’
• Single set of functional and
technical requirements
• Joint procurement exercise
• Institutions to share cost of
procurement
• Procure single system.
• Cloud hosted
• Separate interfaces and
branding
• Search across single union
catalogue and individual
catalogues
• Governance:
• WHELF to agree vision for
how far they want to
share.
• Governance mechanisms
will reflect this.
• Formal steering and
working groups to be
established (AWHILES
involvement).
• Formal mechanisms for
decision-making.
11

12. Next steps
• WHELF to agree overall vision for sharing.
• WHELF institutions to confirm their intention to be part of a
shared service and provide financial commitment for
procurement process.
• Steering groups and project groups to be established to take
forward procurement.
• Appoint programme manager to lead the procurement.
• Confirm detailed requirements and develop tender
specification.
• Agree phased road-map for who will go first.
• Likely timescale – start procurement in January 2014; first
institutions likely to go live in 2015.
• Cardiff likely to be later in the road-map. 12

13. Further information
• Blogs.cf.ac.uk/sharedlms/
13