NEWS FEATURE Can you feel a presence?
Not many people know yet what the British Library’s Single Digital Presence looks like. The latest information is that the project has received a £3.4m grant from Arts Council England (ACE) but there is still no vivid picture of this nationwide shopfront for the public library sector.
THE funding details are that some of the cash (£2.4m) will go towards building “technical architecture… software devel- opment and live testing with a range of library authorities.” And the rest (£1m) will help li- braries in England upgrade their IT capabilities to be compatible with the new platform.
Possibly of equal interest is the scale of this latest phase in the project: that it is hoped that this £1 million will enable about 20 per cent of UK public library services to improve their IT enough to take part in the project. Liz White, Head of Public Libraries and Community Engagement at the British Library, told Information Professional that the ambition to reach up to 20 per cent of library services in England “was based on available capital fund- ing” adding that “further discussions and consideration will take place to determine the grant criteria.” She adds that she would welcome input from the sector on a “useful and practical grant scheme that will add value.”
What is it?
The nature of the SDP itself remains hard to grasp. In a blog post announcing the grant, Sue Williamson, ACE’s Director of Libraries, suggests that the new SDP may need to be seen to be be- lieved, saying: “Seeing a mock-up front window was revelatory to me, suddenly this concept had a presence and it was exciting.”
And there appear to be no examples in the real world for us to compare it to. Liz said: “There isn’t a direct compar- ison although other countries have various elements of what we’re setting out to achieve.”
Instead she said the BL vision, for this phase, was to develop a national digital channel showcasing the best of what libraries offer. One that also
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enables national organisations like the BL to share content with local users (e.g. events, online exhibitions, news, national campaigns).
The second strand is to enable services to improve local library web presence, and the third is to establish “a seamless user journey between the two.”
We asked Liz why there was no mention of books or lending in the information provided with the grant announcement, and whether the platform might enable anything on this front at some point? She said: “We’ll continue to listen to what peo- ple would like to see on the platform as the work develops, but this isn’t in scope for the current phase.”
For now the platform will provide librar- ies a space to showcase particular content. Darren Henley, CEO of Arts Council England, said that the new SDP “will host library-curated content and services, pro- moting two-way traffic with local library websites and giving national visibility to local events and collections”.
And Sue’s blog post adds: “Through this platform I will not only be able to find out what is going on in my local commu- nity but also be able to see what other communities are doing and to view those collections and activities from libraries all across the world, as well as exhibitions that I can only dream of visiting.”
Patience
Despite this, the SDP prototype remains fairly mysterious to those not directly involved in the project.
It is also hard to track how the current thinking maps back to the BL’s first report which evaluated five ideas for an SDP that it said could potentially co-exist, be com- bined, or evolve from one to another.
l Deep shared infrastructure: nationwide library management system;
l UK-wide content discovery system: an aggregator;
l unified digital lending; l safe social space; l one library brand.
Liz White. © Michael Redina
The options in bold were seen as the “three potential paths for future strategic development” – based on a matrix that looked at set-up costs, running costs, execution challenge and public value.
Where the current Single Digital Presence project fits into these five original options is hard to pin down but, while the sector is impatient to know what’s in the pipeline, that impatience has been tempered by the fact that, whatever it is, it’s getting some funding. As Ian Anstice said on his Public Libraries News site: “I have sent a pile of questions (sorry British Library!) about the project to get some more information and I hope to report more fully soon. But the fact it is going ahead at all, with funding, is good news as it was first considered over a decade ago.”
June 2021
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