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.

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