Feature
g
and there’s no way to load that volume of information to locally deployed systems. The cloud allows large content sets to be available to all customers without their having to curate them locally.’ As Scott Livingston, executive director
at OCLC, noted, there are significant cost savings and the potential for greater collaboration: ‘There are significant transfers related to cost of ownership – from the institution that is using the application to the institution that is hosting the software and cloud experience. For example, shifting costs around software maintenance and updating, and hardware expenses. Neither of those are needed in cloud environments, and so those costs of ownership transfer from the library back to the organisation providing the service. ‘In a multi-tenant cloud environment,
where multiple institutions exist in the same cloud environment, things like information and data sharing become significantly easier. One of the classic examples is, there may be a single cataloguer working for several libraries in a consortium or group and a multi- tenant experience allows that individual to catalogue items amongst all those institutions in a much more efficient and effective way, than in a locally deployed system would allow.’ This significant benefit of the cloud does not mean there have been no objections to the shift, but early objections have largely been overcome, and where there is still a reluctance it is often for cultural reasons. Livingston continued: ‘Early on, much of
the focus was around security, because data is stored in the cloud as well as the operating software, and there was enormous anxiety about third-party organisations being able to protect that data in the same way that a locally deployed instance of a piece of software could. Those days are long past, and security specifically because it’s a cloud environment is not top of mind for most institutions anymore. ‘What you do continue to see are
some institutions that prefer to have a locally deployed system because it typically allows them to do significant
6 Research Information October/November 2020
customisation, to create a much more tailored solution for them. And that notion of being able to control your own destiny with a locally installed system does resonate with a certain part of the marketplace. But by and large most institutions, particularly in environments like we’re in today, see cloud computing as a significant strategic advantage for them. Cloud computing is the new norm.
An increasingly integrated ecosystem As cloud computing has become the ‘new norm’, it has enabled an increasingly integrated system of services. As the different parts of the library ecosystem move to the cloud it becomes easier for them to connect with each other – and as more institutions move to the cloud, it becomes more financially viable for new services to be developed. Roger Valade, chief technology officer
at ProQuest, highlighted ProQuest’s Rialto marketplace as a great example of the sort of integration that is now possible. Rialto is the result of a longstanding vision to integrate the selection and acquisition workflows in a single environment. Building Rialto atop the Ex Libris Higher Ed Cloud Platform allowed ProQuest to place a modern marketplace into the same system libraries use to manage their collections, holdings, budget and more. The benefits are not just theoretical, but measurable, as Valade explained: ‘Rialto enables a librarian to interact with a marketplace of products and services in Alma directly. If you have a patron who is looking for a book that you don’t have, you can trigger the acquisition process right within that workflow. One of the first libraries to go live on Rialto has cut the time it takes to place an order by more than half. The system matches requests against their current inventory and gives them information in real time.’ Burke provides Rapido as another
integration example under development, in an area which has traditionally been far from integrated: ‘Rapido is a true cloud- based model for interlibrary loan and resource sharing, an area in which many libraries still use very old technology. Rapido has a holdings index that allows
“The reason for the shift to the cloud is simple, but the benefits are enormous”
end-users to place requests for items that are not in the local collection, get immediate feedback, and move the transaction through in a very efficient way. It’s another example of how the cloud has matured enough that we’re starting to see complete changes to models of very traditional services.’
Artificial intelligence As well as integration, the great swathes of data that are being collected and shared via the cloud also opens the opportunity for artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer new insights and improvements to the way services are used.
As Valade points out, AI has been much
heralded in the past, but this time it’s different: ‘It’s because of the cloud that we’re able to use AI to make products better for our users. We’ve been talking about AI for decades, but now we actually have the technology and data to make an impact. Today, we can use AI to improve the search experience – helping users find what they’re looking for and recommending additional content to them. We’re able to do this more and more effectively as time goes on.’ Livingston notes, in a similar vein: ‘Machine learning around data analytics is one of the places that is most within our grasp, and you are seeing the beginnings of a lot of good work in that space already. In the cloud environment, all those individual data assets can connect together, and so you can deploy machine learning technologies that start to allow for really interesting new advances around benchmarking, assessment, and best practice identification. ‘You can start to see outliers not just
in your institution but across the shared collective cloud experience. The other
@researchinfo |
www.researchinformation.info g
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54
