Nick London wrote:
> The concept of a regional or national platform to which
authorities can
> subscribe that includes all the 'good' online resources
ought to be an
> achievable and useful service. What we need is a group
of people or an
> organisation that will set it up.
Here in the South West we've actually achieved this in
fairly low-tech way in the form of the cyberLibrary -
www.cyberlibrary.org.uk
It's been in existence now for the past five years and our
final two partners joined a couple of months ago. We are
planning a 'proper' launch following a few changes
(including an updating of the colour scheme and graphics)
but this seems a good opportunity for a soft launch.
It's the result of an informal partnership between ALL the
library services in the South West region and is based on
Plymouth where the site had its origins and is hosted.
In Plymouth it's the home page on all People's Network
computers while partners promote it on their own home pages.
It's based on a very old-fashioned concept - sharing out
subjects between the partners. They are left to review new
sites, revise old reviews and remove out-of-date ones within
the bounds of a couple of clear policy documents. The
emphasis has been on Keeping It Simple and an absolute
minimum of formality. No money changes hands between the
partners - it's based on collaboration. Because the relevant
colleagues in each authority know each other, any issues are
resolved quickly and informally. We do have an exit strategy
because no-one can predict the future.
With the future in mind, we've just begun work on setting up
a demonstrator on del.icio.us. This will be added to quickly
over the next few weeks:
http://del.icio.us/cyberlibrary
Future developments should explore federated searching -
hardly a new idea in academic libraries, but not in most
public libraries - but that requires funding and won't come
cheap.
Chris
--
Chris Goddard
Plymouth, UK
webrarian.co.uk
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