Going Live

We're now at the stage where we can talk publicly about the network's plans for the first group of libraries which will go live on the LMS.  We're delighted to announce that we have 8 libraries organised, with planned "go live" dates, training well under way and much of their circulation mapping completed.  We still have work to do around data conversion aspects, but all of this is progressing according to our project schedule.

It is planned that a southern metro/country group will go live in May and then a northern metro group will go live in June.  The southern group of councils are Alexandrina, Onkaparinga, Marion and Mitcham, with Mitcham being the 1st library going live on May 3.  The northern group of libraries are Playford, Salisbury, Tea Tree Gully and Port Adelaide Enfield. We will be adding 1 library per week over these two months.

You will note that each of these groups form a geographic region, so customers in these libraries will be able to access some of their neighbouring libraries soon after their own library joins the consortium.

We also have a long queue of libraries who we are currently working with to slot them into an achievable timeline.  Amongst these libraries are: 

• a group in the Mallee - Pinnaroo, Lameroo, Karoonda & East Murray, 
• a group in the Far North - Coober Pedy, Roxby Downs, Andamooka, Leigh Creek & Woomera, 
• a few on the Eyre Peninsula: Ceduna, Kimba and Cummins
• And various others (apologies for refering to you this way - you're just not in a natural geographic cluster) the Flinders Mobile Library & Kingston

We do have a few libraries where we have already firm dates & these are Campbelltown in September and Adelaide in November. 

We also have a number of libraries that have told us unofficially that they either "have got council approval" or are "...about to submit a business case to council and things look good".  So we're expecting that we will have our diaries full well into 2013.

As you can imagine this is a considerable workload for our 2 project managers and our technical lead, along with our change manager (who is also currently our training coordinator) and the rest of the team.  We will therefore need to work with libraries to ensure that local plans and adequate local staff resources are in place so that that each library will join the consortium in an orderly and professional manner.

We're excited at the level of commitment and note that by the time we get to Christmas we expect to have councils that represent approximately 55% of the State's population participating in the consortium.  This will see a database of over 2M items available for direct public access.

As we firm up dates for the country libraries listed above I will provide updates.