Benefits from the iFind Discover project
The iFind Discover project should deliver a shared discovery platform for resources held within the libraries of Swansea University, Swansea Metropolitan University and University of Wales Trinity St David, along with integration with e-resource discovery using MetaLib. As well as integrating the three catalogues, the platform should be a significant improvement in design and functionality on those currently in use.
This is a sub-project within the wider Virtual Academic Library project under the SWWHEP umbrella, and aims to facilitate some of the other deliverables, in particular reciprical borrowing and document delivery between institutions. It will help open up a greater range of resources to students and staff of the three institutions in a more seamless and user-friendly way than has been available up to the present.
The universities will also benefit from the experience of implementing an open source project within the library, which is likely to be of value given the growing number of open source products coming onto the market, up to and including full library management systems.
Benefits to the wider academic community
Any institution which is considering implemention VuFind, or another open-source discovery platform, is likely to benefit from the experiences of the SWWHEP project. Additionally, in parts of the UK higher education sector, such as Wales, there is increasing pressure on HE institutions to collaborate in order to save costs while still delivering better service. The use of a modern, open-source, discovery platform which has been enhanced to integrate services from separate institutional systems may be very relevant to other collaborative projects driven by this agenda.
The case study will also cover the project’s potential contribution to the core VuFind product, thus making the multi-system functionality readily available to any collaborative resource discovery project which chooses this product.
[Article taken from the SWWHEP Libraries Shared Resource Discovery Project Blog http://swwhepsrch.blogspot.com/]
Aims, objectives and final output of iFind Case Study
The principal aim of this project is to deliver a case study on the SWWHEP implementation of VuFind as a shared discovery platform, which will include:
- A detailed report on evaluation of products, technical implementation, with clarifications on resources committed, timescale and new functionality added to the VuFind product (all of which is being fed back into the open source community).
- An overview of user feedback from beta testing & the initial release, along with details of how any user concerns were / are being addressed.
- A full 'Lessons Learned' evaluation, including recommendations for other institutions undertaking similar products, and recommendations resulting from the project.
- Material will be prepared for contribution to a public event as per the JISC requirements.
- The objective in producing the case study is to provide further understanding of the processes and pitfalls in the implementation of open-source software in a collaborative environment, with the possibility of applying the lessons learned in future, possibly larger, projects of this nature.