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
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?
Publicity
materials are definitely necessary, but the products need to
meet librarians' *and* users'
expectations of quality *and*
functionality.
Michael
(who is apparently rather cranky today - sorry!)
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