Hi Lawrence,
Thanks for your reply. I don't think we're interested in taking feeds from general sources such as Nielsen or OCLC to be honest, both of which have useful data - however it is unlikely that competing vendors such as Coutts or Dawson are likely to release commercially sensitive information such as price or range of ebook coverage in a more open subscribed forum such as OCLC or Nielsen.
We're more interested in harvesting data in a live feed from our contracted suppliers, to pull down data on pricing, formats, editions, availability etc so that all information can be centralised and displayed on a single online ordering form. Fragmentation is a major problem where you mightn't necessarily be using the same vendor for P as you are for E, or you might be using another vendor for second hand supply. This fragmentation wastes staff time in the work flow of acquisitions departments, and also (I think) hampers effective selection by patrons by referring them off to 3 different platforms.
The trick is to pull down and pipe the respective catalogues of each contracted supplier so you can work with a non-stop shop, and present a live ordering form to patrons with live data feeds. One of the major problems we have here, like many institutions, is that reading lists have become static and haven't necessarily kept up to speed with new publications. Piping live bibliographic data into an online ordering form is one solution to this so that selecting patrons can make selection choices based on new scholarship and publications, and thereby modernise their reading lists for undergraduates and build up the research monographs in collection with cutting edge scholarship.
We're currently in the process of rolling out a reading list management system which will integrate with our LMS and our vendors' ordering platforms. The reading list management system will have the ability to check a vendor's ordering platform for supply availability, and if the item is available will automatically populate an order either on the vendor platform, or directly to the LMS. The live feeds should work by means of API integration, which at industry level appears to be gradually replacing older data communication methods such as Edifact.
We want to extend this advantageous workflow so that patrons can place orders for non-reading list material within an online ordering form, and have full vendor catalogue information in front of them from a variety of chosen suppliers, inclusive of an accurate price, whether the item is available in E, and all bib data. As you point out the major suppliers have achieved something like this already by facilitating the integration of their platforms with major LMS systems, via quotes, so that orders keyed in to an online platform do not need to be repeated on the LMS and all the order, budget and item data is automatically populated via MARC or Edifact, depending on which LMS system you use. However the potential fragmentation of differing formats out to different suppliers splits up the one stop shop and it would be extremely confusing to selecting patrons where you might refer them to one vendor platform for ebooks and another platform for print books.
With fragmentation you just can't achieve a one stop shop and it makes it pretty impossible for libraries to roll out a vendor's platform as their ordering form. Also tenders have a life span, so the lot winners are not likely to remain static, but to change over when the next competition commences. On this basis we have concluded that it would be unwise to roll out a vendor platform as an ordering form in circumstances where the various formats might be fragmented to different suppliers and where there is no long term stability in terms of who your supplier might be in 4 or 5 years' time. The better approach is to examine whether the new generation LMS systems have the ability to pipe information down from chosen suppliers into a single online ordering form, hosting live data from each supplier. We're currently exploring whether our current version of Primo can pipe this information down, which we think it can, however currently Primo does not have an ordering form embedded within it so this does not appear to form the basis of a solution - maybe someone out there has gone down this route; if so we would be interested to hear from them.
I have seen some demonstrations of the acquisitons modules of Alma and Innovative and it seems to us that both systems might have a solution along the lines discussed above and I suppose what we really want to know if whether any acquisitions department out there has cracked open a solution to the conundrum of the 'one stop shop' and if so, whether the solution has been provided by the new generation LMS, or whether they have designed something more bespoke at local level.
Best,
Neil
Neil O'Brien
Collection Management Librarian
James Hardiman Library
National University of Ireland Galway
Phone: 00353 91 493338
Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
www.library.nuigalway.ie<http://www.library.nuigalway.ie>
-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by UKSG - Connecting the Information Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Laurence Lockton
Sent: 13 May 2015 10:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [lis-e-resources] Online ordering forms and integrations with LMS
Hi Neil,
Could you explain what you mean by a 'live data feed into a single form'? Forgive me, I'm not much involved in selection and acquisitions but I'm mildly interested from an LMS/LSP perspective. Are you thinking of a federated search of multiple suppliers' systems, or more like RSS feeds or harvesting of lists of forthcoming publications, perhaps?
OCLC looks to be developing a "Marketplace" in WorldShare https://www.oclc.org/partnerships.en.html#section-marketplace presumably by aggregating records from publishers and retailers, and SirsiDynix has a "BLUEcloud Marketplace" mentioned in a flyer http://www.sirsidynix.com/files/pdf/BLUEcloudCollateralBleed.pdf, but if it exists at all I guess it'll just be public library-focussed e-book aggregators at the moment. I'm not sure how much the major library suppliers like Coutts, YBP and Dawson would welcome this though, as they presumably consider their ordering platforms to fulfil the role of "one stop shop."
Thanks,
Laurence Lockton
University of Bath
-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by UKSG - Connecting the Information Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of O'Brien, Neil
Sent: 12 May 2015 18:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [lis-e-resources] Online ordering forms and integrations with LMS
Dear Colleagues,
I wonder if any of you have worked on adapting a vendor's ordering platform (eg Dawsonera, Oasis, GOBI etc) into a new generation LMS online ordering form (or Primo) - or if this is possible?
We are interested in piping live bibliographic data from a vendor's platform down via API to an ordering form so that our selecting patrons can have a live feed of bibliographic data on formats (ebook, print etc), prices, editions, ISBN etc hosted within the LMS ordering form and place orders for the items within on the LMS ordering form rather than the platform. We're just completing the process of integrating ordering through the Aleph vendor loader system. However this has limitations.
We have given consideration to embedding a vendor's ordering platform within our website and rolling this out as our online ordering form, though this can be problematic in circumstances where the first vendor of choice for ebooks and print are not the same. Also where the first vendor of choice for either format is subject to change over time, then the online form would not be stable and potentially it could confuse patron selectors if we don't have a stable online ordering interface. Accordingly the best solution overall is to pipe down bibliographic data from the preferred vendors into the LMS form. The advantages of this are, we think, obvious, as it will aid with modernising reading list material and allow for vendor discretion in selecting whether they have a preference for E or P, and it would probably greatly improve workflows and turnarounds.
I wonder if any institution out there has done anything similar to this, and if they would be willing to discuss it through with us. Currently we are operating Aleph version 21, however it is likely that we will very soon tender for a new generation LMS. Therefore I would be particularly interested in anyone who has rolled out an acquisitions workflow on the main new generation systems.
Best wishes,
Neil
Neil O'Brien
Collection Management Librarian
James Hardiman Library
National University of Ireland Galway
Phone: 00353 91 493338
Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
www.library.nuigalway.ie<http://www.library.nuigalway.ie>
lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/UKSG
lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/UKSG
lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org
UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/UKSG
|