per cent of their stock budgets. But the relationship and value of the LMS in a public library ecosystem has changed. Kelly said: “Yes it has changed a lot. It is driving a lot of our IT now. Before it was a process driven function, there to process the books. Originally it was set up to rep- licate an inhouse process but now it is an interactive tool and the impact is huge.” She said that the costs had also dropped, saving authorities thousands – “but we’re not spending anything like that now”. Compared to its predecessor Anthony said: “This is a cheaper product and we’re gettingalotmoreintermsofsystemoffer and the LSP. The strength is in the num- bers, so the more people in the consortium, the cheaper it is for everybody.”
Back to front
The consortium’s vision for Ebook man- agement shows how the system could be integrated. Anthony says: “Overdrive doesn’t communicate with the LMS at the moment, it provides some data and information but there’s not a direct interface with the LMS. But it’s one of the things that we expect to be moving to with the LSP, the platform, the front-facing part that customers see and access. So, while the LMS feeds into the LSP (library services platform), the LSP is also draw- ing in data and information and services fromaraftofdifferentthings,suchas Overdrive.” These connections will enable smoother interactions with customers. “At the moment waiting lists are managed in overdrive but they will be moved onto the LSP,” he says. For Kelly in Sutton, the consortium means her users have access to over 6 million books rather than 150,000. And Anthony points out that what Merton spends on ebooks would give it access to 10,000 books while membership of the consortium bumps that up to closer to 150,000. One of the key purposes of the LMS/LSP is the man- agement of the complexity of sharing and access across nearly 20 library services. But a side product of the scaling up of ser- vices is the scaling up of data generation – potentially making it more powerful.
Data
The integration of the LMS, the LSP and all the apps and digital services will gen- erate a lot of data about users. Kelly said: “At the moment public library leaders don’t use data as well as they could. They tend not to consider their own data or what value it has. We tend to rely on glob- al, national information. But that’s some- thing that’s changing. We’ve been looking at the data that the library consortium has now. I’ve got a colleague working on this - for instance looking at how customers use the LMS, what they are searching for, iftheyfinditoriftheydon’t,andwhyor how that happens. This is going to give
world where local authorities are strug- gling to provide basic services, aligning work forces with new technology is going tobedifficult.It’saproblemthatacon- sortium may be able to overcome. Anthony says: “Public libraries in England and the UK budget wise have shrunk. Itmeansalotofourofficersneedtobe multi-skilled and it means that in every authority there will be someone with an element of expertise in development or data management. In a consortium it’s going to be what we’ve got collectively, that we need to build up. We don’t all have LMS expertise and none of us has anyone whose only role is to support the LMS. So, it’s how we bring it all together, that’swherewegettheefficiencyandthe expertise.”
Because of the breadth of skills needed, Sutton Central Library.
us a lot of insight into what we need to purchase for our customers and where we lose our customers. We’ve always had data like this but now we are actually doing something with it. For example, recent feedback on the website found that customers get to a certain point in downloading an ebook and then get stuck when the process shifts to another organisation’s platform. So, they’ve found the book but when they move to the provider’s platform they go “Oh no, now I’ve got to re-log back in again,” and we’ve lost them.” There is also a lot of untapped data coming in from the existing apps. It remains untapped because it is not integrated. Anthony said: “The platform will just be a lot more integrated at the back end. At the moment its bespoke separate reports … with this we can potentially share it with other systems to improve the picture of the customer and what people are using, how they relate and engage. This is the kind of work that’s going on at the moment.”
While this could unlock many possibil-
ities, Anthony says: “Sometimes the way the data is merged is quite complex, so if we all worked in isolation we’d really struggle, but the fact that we all work together means that we can manipulate it, read it better, and share challenges and problems. What the system can do is pretty advanced and we will need to get a better grip on it because there’s a lot more that it can do for us.”
People sharing Technologyandfinanceoftendominate the digital agenda. But if the people and the institutions who use them don’t also change, the new tools won’t work. In a
newspecificationsratherthannewposts may be needed. For example Kelly say’s Sutton’s data analyst role is not new: “It’s a post that we’ve always had. It was there to support our stock purchasing but now so many processes have become automated that she has the capacity to grow the role. We’re very lucky that data is something that she’s interested in, so we’ve progressed it to become a data analyst’s role.”
Kelly points out that there is “a bit of give and take” when it comes to time freed up bycentralLMS“becausesomestaffspend more time working in the consortium, for example the chair of the stock and user group works for Sutton but he spends about 50 per cent of his time on the consortium.”
Knowledge share
Kelly says that right from the start joining the consortium opens a reassuring peer to peer communication that doesn’t just require collaboration, but also demon- strates its value. “When a new authority joins, an existing authoritywillholdtheirhandandstaff will go on site for a couple of days to get used to the system, the new terminology, new layout. When Hounslow joined, Croydonstaffwentandsupportedthem because Croydon had just joined and they would remember the problems, the things they had to get over, and they got to share that knowledge. That’s really powerful. Staffgetsomeoneattheirleveltelling them it works. It is much more powerful than me, as head of service, doing it.” She says: “The biggest thing for me has been the knowledge sharing with heads of service. We come together and say “this hasn’t worked for me” or “my customers are complaining about this” and we help each other. Just talking to other heads about the challenges we face really helps. It’s an added bonus that you can’t quantify financially.Icangetadvicethatotherwise wouldn’t be readily available.” BG
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