How we will work - 1st set of policies published

Well, the Transitional User Group has been working really hard over the last few months & their work is now beginning to see the light of day.  As many of you would be aware, the Group has been considering the fundamental policies and rules which will govern how the consortium will work.

 The Group's considerations were put out to the Network for consultation and to gain feedback.  this feedback was considered, the Group's recommendations modified, and then these recommendations went to the Libraries Board's Standing Committee for approval.  At its meeting on 6 December the Standing Committee approved the Group's recommendations.  All of these are now found on the Intranet here.

The Group met yesterday and considered your feedback to the 3rd paper.  A 4th paper was also considered by the group.  The Group's recommendations from this 4th paper will be out for consultation in the next few days.

Thanks to everyone who has provided feedback on these papers.  It has been invaluable to both hear your views and to know that you are engaged in the discussion.

Customer Experience using the new LMS

In my post of 14 November I mentioned that the LMS User Experience Group was meeting to look at the LMS from the customer side & consider whether this meets our needs or whether there are other functions that we need to enhance the user experience.  We noted during the evaluation phase that all vendors' products had strengths and weaknesses & that all could probably be improved by deploying the functionality of 3rd party product providers.

James Kemperman is leading this Group which includes a range of staff from public libraries.  The expectation is that the group will report back to the Steering Committee in March next year. The group commenced its deliberations by creating a list of features that members thought would be ideal to have in an LMS Discovery Layer.  The specification that the group came up with, and the response from SirsiDynix is loaded onto the Intranet as a .pdf here.  The really good news from this is that a significant number of the features that the group wanted are already available within Enterprise (the discovery layer).

Below is part of an email from James to library managers and others who have expressed an interest in the work of the group.  It gives you an idea of the range of additional products that the group is looking at in terms of additional functionality.  You can click on the links to go & see what these products do.

From James's email:

The LMS User Experience Group has been tasked to recommend to the LMS Steering Committee which 3^rd party products the consortium should consider purchasing to add further value to our customers through the new LMS. The LMS User Experience Group has met several times now and have put together the attached list of functionality and information. After analysing the functionality of the new LMS products (Bowker Syndetics, Sirsi Dynix BookMyne, Sirsi Dynix Enterprise, Sirsi Dynix Facebook application, Sirsi Dynix Portfolio, Sirsi Dynix Symphony with e-library) and comparing this to the attached list we have determined that we need to consider the following 3^rd party products under the remit of this group:

Products being considered by the LMS User Experience Group:

• Chilifresh - http://www.chilifresh.com/html/products.php

• EZproxy® authentication and access software -http://www.oclc.org/ca/en/ezproxy/default.htm
• Serial Solutions 360 Search - http://www.serialssolutions.com/discovery/360-search/
• Serial Solutions Aquabrowser - http://www.serialsolutions.com/discovery/aquabrowser/
• LibraryThing - http://www.librarything.com/
• Bibliocommons - http://www.bibliocommons.com/

Over the coming 4-6 weeks the group will analyse these products in order to determine the best products to recommend to the LMS Steering Committee.

_____________________________________________________________

ILLs

Only in a library context could we talk about ILL without thinking about sickness!  That is just a quirky aside that has stuck me during my long library career!

After my post on Monday someone added a comment which read in part,  

 "... can the public place their own ILL requests? Will the loan period still be two weeks? Is there a limit on how many ILLs you can have at time? Even though there will be an increase in ILLs I think it will be a great improvement for our customers. Especially those with special needs who currently have a small collection to access."

I know that so many of us are keen to learn more about exactly how the consortium will impact on every aspect of our jobs.  And I am keen to provide that certainty to you.  However it will take some time for the whole network to go from establishing the broad principles to then articulating what this will mean for specific rules within the system.  The Transitional User Group is working on behalf of the network to set the broad parameters first, and then it will look at some of the specifics like loan periods & limits etc.  The group may recommend that some of these detailed rules be set at the local level, or they may recommend that these become standardised.

So at the moment I cannot tell you whether ILLs will have a 2 week loan period or whether there will be a limit to how many requests each customer can make.  This will be something to be considered by the User Group at some stage.  

However I can tell you that customers will be able to directly place their own ILL requests.  They will be able to do this both in the library and also remotely 24/7.

Yes - it is likely that there will be a significant increase in ILLs, but the staff workload to satisfy each request will be significantly reduced.  Imagine - no more P2 requests and answering these requests.  No more adding short bib records to circulate the ILLs to customers. The process will be  part of normal daily work - retrieving items from the daily "pick list" and placing some on your local "holds" shelf while others go in the black boxes destined for customers in other libraries.  And when the black box arrives, items will be "wanded" onto the LMS which will trigger an SMS to the customer to say the item is available, with no further work by library staff such as creating short bib records to circulate the item etc.

Oh - and I wonder if these transfers will really be thought of as an ILL i.e. an Inter-Library Loan.  Or will they just be a "hold" or "reservation" of any copy within the system.  Many "holds" will be filled by stock within the local library's collection, with other requests going off to other libraries.  The customer wont mind where it comes from, but will be delighted to receive it.
  

So with these changes we wont need a specialised P2 ILL role, as customers will place their own "holds" - or any staff member can do this for customers.  And many staff can share the load of finding items on the shelves, sending them to requesting libraries, and putting them on the "holds" shelf ready for the customers.

I should also point out one piece of functionality that I know is in the "holds" area is the ability to put an end date on reservations.  i.e. if this hold cannot be satisfied by XX date please cancel the hold.  I think that this will be feature that we will need to heavily promote & it may cut down on many many unwanted items being shipped around the State.

And speaking of SMS alerts - as I was a few paras earlier, for those of you who are sending printed notifications of holds being available this will change both your business processes and your costs. A TXT message is instant, and alerts the customer who may be in the vicinity, rather than them having to wait for the post to arrive in a couple of days.  And TXTs cost less than 20c compared to a 50c stamp and then the stationery costs. 

The system also provides for email alerts too.  Each library can decide the method of notification for each individual customer whether the alert will be TXT, email or snail mail.

And yes - think of those with specific interests.  They will be able to search for, and access items in their area of interest from collections across the State. This may relate to a personal hobby, or searching for all the books written in Polish in the collection.

Instant customer access to over 4M items will be one of the changes which will both transform the customer experience and also ensure that libraries continue to be valuable and valued by the community. And then there is the instant access to online content through the LMS - but I will save this for another discussion!