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All, This sounds like one for the MLA's current consultation on a Strategic Leadership paper and the direction of Blueprint for the Future at the moment. Second activity strand envisaged is Resources and Incentives. Secondly, to review existing grant mechanisms and other MLA Partnership resources to develop the capability to back the 'beacon proposals' with targeted capacity-building measures that can add value by supporting the management of change; to put in place as soon as practicable a more effective means by which the Partnership can promote best practice and attract partnership funding and sponsorship; Wouldn't a nationally joined-up way of delivering a single search and retrieval system for the many individually properly accredited information sources both a) be extremely useful, not least in giving libraries a clearly identifiable advantage in terms of credibility as purveyors of information, and b) tick the MLA's boxes above. Nick London's earlier comment summed it up - 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. Hugh Hugh Paton Acting Development and Support Services Manager London Borough of Bexley - Libraries and Community Information Tel 020 8309 4134 ________________________________ From: lis-pub-libs: UK Public Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steven Heywood Sent: 21 September 2007 13:24 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Online resources - KnowUK, OUP etc Not too pedantic at all Michael. It's a major pain in the butt setting up a range of resources which each require the same thing a different way before they may (or may not in the case of British Standards. Grr!!!) be made available to our customers. There are ways of having automatically mediated access to these resources which could conceivably be developed into something along the lines you suggest but as things stand it would require each library authority to invent the wheel for itself, resources permitting. (The last two words being the killer bringing us back to Helen's original problem, sigh...). Steven Steven Heywood Systems Manager Rochdale Library Service Wheatsheaf Library Baillie Street Rochdale OL16 1JZ Tel: (01706) 924967 [log in to unmask] http://www.rochdale.gov.uk http://libraries.rochdale.gov.uk -----Original Message----- From: Stead, Michael [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 21 September 2007 12:41 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Online resources - KnowUK, OUP etc The big issue for me is that, as a user, I have to go to each of these accredited sources individually. Google goes to zillions of sources at the same time. It's just not worth the effort to log into multiple password-controlled sources. The Google approach might be a bit hit-and-miss in terms of quality, but at least it's easy enough to use. Even with IP-based access in the library, it's still a pain to go through this process. I think we'd get more value from a system that provided a single, customisable frontend to these resources, providing an aggregated search to cover all of them. Search once, read results from many sources. I'd like to see MLA advocating for (and maybe providing?) a much more joined-up way of using these resources. I'd also like to see them imposing standardised reporting requirements on the vendors of these systems, especially considering the advent of more meaningful measurement of virtual library visits. Each resource - the OUP bundle, British Standards, NewsUK etc. - provides its own statistics and has its own reporting standards. Wouldn't it be easier to compare usage (and value) if they all reported in the same way, via the same single access point? Or am I too pedantic? 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