Categories
Planning

The Vision and the transformation going forward

Jisc’s vision is to transform our library support services by developing a more effective, efficient and cohesive set of library services.

Our aim is to develop a modular approach to our library support services, presenting services that more clearly support library activities, for example acquisition, evaluation or preservation. Instead of developing one all-encompassing library support service, we will continue to provide services separately, for example JUSP and KB+, but moving between our services for a particular library activity will become a more seamless and intuitive experience. This will allow libraries the flexibility to use our services to best suit their individual needs and in conjunction with their own third party services.

Plan in more detail

In order to achieve our vision, we will carry out a programme of work, of which the main activities are:

  • Developing a National Bibliographic Knowledgebase (NBK)
  • Orchestrating the data used by each of the library support services, standardising data sources between services and eliminating unnecessary duplication of effort
  • Working on a more detailed understanding of how our library support services support librarians’ activities – for example, from acquisition and licensing through to usage gathering and perpetual access. This will enable us to present Jisc services to librarians in a clear, consistent way through improvements to service interfaces
  • Consolidating maintenance systems/web and making more effective use of cloud infrastructure. API development will support and deliver on the data orchestration activity
  • We will take an iterative approach to developments, both enhancing and integrating existing services and taking the initiative with new opportunities and challenges for the library sector.

Affected services & impact on you

A number of services will be impacted from this development work, including primarily:

  • Jisc Collections
  • JUSP
  • KB+
  • SUNCAT
  • The Keepers Registry

However, the impact is intended to be minimal on user’s experience as much of the work is about the underlying technology and data and centralising and standardising these key service elements. What impact there will be, is when improvements are made to interfaces, but it is expected that these will be entirely positive and beneficial to users of all these services.

Timeframes

Activity Detailed activity: Deliverables/Outputs Due date
Developing a National Bibliographic Knowledgebase (NBK)
  • Selection of preferred supplier and contract placed
  • Library catalogue data available in NBK and beta service available
October 2016
July 2018
Data Orchestration & Standards
  • Authority data sources identified for services
  • Plan produced for proposed data changes
July 2017
Workflow mapping and user interface design
  • User consultation and testing of wireframes with community agreement on workflow approach
July 2017
Consolidation of maintenance systems/web and API development
  • Exploit cloud environment
  • Develop APIs for centralised data sources
July 2017
Access management – develop a single sign-on to support working across services
  • Consolidate service account details
July 2017

Consultation mechanisms

A new Advisory Group, with sector-wide representation, will be created to support and advise on the transformation project.

If you have any queries about any aspect of this message or our approach, then please follow updates via this blog or get in touch with me:

Siobhán Burke, Library Support Services Programme Manager

siobhan.burke@jisc.ac.uk

Or contact your Jisc Account manager.

 

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