Unified Library Management Systems: Issues

Gordon DunsireDepute Director

Centre for Digital Library ResearchUniversity of Strathclyde

General systems

• To get best value, any “system” needs to organise its information for– Effectiveness

• Does it do what it’s supposed to?

– Efficiency• Does it do it well?

Organised information

• Coherency– Are you talking about the same thing as me?

• Consistency– Are you saying it in the same way?

• Completeness– Is what you’re saying the whole picture?

• Achieved through the application of standards

Library management systems

• A type of general system– But dealing with information itself

• So need to organise information about information– Metadata

• Not just bibliographic metadata (catalogues, indexes)– Also stock management (barcodes), etc.

Scope

• Metadata is the stuff on which an LMS operates– The data which it processes

• But system isn’t just data and hardware/software– Humans

• End-users, Administrators, Operators, Managers

– Other systems• Very few “systems” are self-contained• LMS might interact with: external LMS(s); personnel;

authentication; etc.

Distributed LMS

• Designed for more than one “organisation”– Branches and/or separate institutions

• Additional functionality required– Human components distributed in space– Multiple instances of types of external system

• Local needs to be met– But systems must be unified at “consortium”

level

Local vs Global

• But LMS itself must interact with even larger aggregation of LMS– NHS elsewhere; health/medicine elsewhere;

Web/Internet

• So distributed LMS lies between local, consortial, and “global”

• Balance is required

Local/global balancing act

• Ultimately, human system operation is local (branch or institution)

• Local operation must meet needs at two higher levels (ULMS < global LMS)

• Best value through standards– Practices/workflows and good/effective

(U)LMS tools operating on metadata/stuff

Evolution

• External systems at local and global level likely to change, so ULMS needs to able to respond

• ULMS itself is a change, and may in turn influence local systems (including humans as users, operators, etc.)

• Global level changing rapidly