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

 

 

 

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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