Is the Cloud for all Libraries?

Is the Cloud for
a
ll Libraries?

Wesley College Libraries and Information Services

Wesley College

Melbourne





•
3500 Students P
-
12, 500+ staff

•
Three
m
etropolitan campuses

•
Clunes residential campus,

•
Off site camps
Mallana
, Healesville,

•
Studio School Fitzroy Crossing,

WA

Library and Information Services

•
5 sites

•
3 City campuses

•
21.5 EFT staff

•
Extensive services to programs and to users

•
Online digital collections

•
Off site storage of 30% of hard copy resources

Cloud Computing




•
Limiting this talk to externally hosted services


•
Web enabled services


•
Subscription Model


Cloud Services




Involvement

•
2008 ongoing Atlas Rubicon Curriculum
Management System


•
2009
-

ongoing

–
Aquabrowser

Search and Discovery System,
Proquest


•
2009
-

2010 and ongoing

–
ContentDM
, OCLC

Factors we considered in deciding on
cloud
-

based services

•
The quality of the product or solution is 1
st

consideration, hosting is 2
nd

consideration

•
Whether the solution or service fits with the
strategic intent of the library services (or client)

•
Establish risk


3 case studies for consideration..




Atlas Rubicon Curriculum Management System


Teacher class calendar


Hosted solution was chosen


•
Faster implementation than locally implemented solution

•
Proven track record with international schools across
Asia Pacific and Europe

•
Vendor relationship
-

responsive

–
Set up trial database for the stakeholders to test and
view

•
Training and support program was clearly articulated and
part of implementation costs

•
Reliability of service, speed and operability


Aquabrowser

Search and Discovery System
2009
-

2010

•
Goal
–

to implement a one stop search and discovery platform

•
Use
syndetics

to add layers and additional information

•
360 Search & federated search over all Library Databases

•
Centralise the collections
–

both hard copy and digital across
the college in single search interface

•
Search system available from home and 24/7 access

•
Add on bibliographic tools such as ‘
Refworks
’


Process implementation
Aquabrowser

•
Consultations with our IT Department

•
Agreement on hosted solution

–
Implementation would be faster than local solution

–
Proposed solution easy to replace if better could be found

–
Allowed for access to the community from home

–
Incorporation of e
-
texts from EBL
–

in line with Library
strategic direction

•
Support from Finance department

–
Rationale communicated and understood

•
Consultations with stakeholders
-

Curriculum



Archives Project 2008
-

2013

•
Requests for assistance from the archives staff to digitise the
collection of year books ‘The Chronicle’ dating from 1876
-

2013

•
‘The Lion’ college magazine, 1961 onwards

•
Year books
from MLC Cato, now Elsternwick Campus,

‘Silver and Green’
-

1931
-

1960 ‘The Coolaroo’ 1961
-

1986

•
Four histories of the College, and biography of L.A Adamson

•
Gift books from 1947 onwards currently being uploaded

Implementation

•
Implementation scheduled from beginning to end
with the
Bowker
/
Proquest

Team in the US
-

via
Base Camp

•
Step by step process fully documented

•
Decision
-
making for all aspects of the set up was
staged via Base Camp meetings

•
Homework between stages to be completed by
the client

•
Handover complete once the client had signed off
on the full working of the system

Process

•
Project planning and partnerships

•
Library team, Archives staff and Wesley Old Collegians

•
Project scope developed, goals, targets

•
Further stakeholders

•
College community
-

students, staff, former students, the
general community

•
Considerations

–
Priority in digitisation given to fragile documents

–
The archives collection contained many objects of value to the
organisation
-

uniforms, furniture, paintings, and memorabilia

–
Consideration needed to be given to making provision for
pictorial as well as 3 D objects in the digital collection


Implementation of Project

•
Funds raised by Old Collegians
–

Library Donations
Fund

•
Scanning of materials by
Caval

Bundoora
-

priority to
year books

•
Research Process into Content Management System


Investigation into
ContentDM


Decision made November 2009

•
Upload of objects
-

over 6000 currently

–
Raw PDFs, OCR process

–
Metadata (Dublin Core IMS) and tagging



Issues

•
Lack of preparation on our part
-

not familiar with the
system we were purchasing

•
Restructure at vendor and client simultaneously at time
of implementation
-

slowed our process

•
Project
planning stalled

–
What did client groups expect?

–
What was feasible?

–
What needed to happen next?




2011
-

2012

•
Re
-
established relationship with the OCLC support

•
Work through technical issues
-

–
Identified errors on our part in upload process

–
Resolved dates searching issues in advanced search

–
Resolving other issues in display of resources




Improvements to
ContentDM

•
Speed of upload of objects

•
Speed of retrieval of objects in search

•
Valuable local assistance from OCLC Australian
office when encountering issues

•
Continuing development of the product

•
Newsletters and updates


New Directions

•
Commenced indexing project in anticipation
of World War 1914
-

1918 100 years
anniversary

•
Create a publication derived from the
Chronicle on Wesley War experiences

•
Project
team established
to further index
topics such as Performing Arts, Sports at
Wesley, Headmasters of the College, Famous
Old Collegians



Lessons Learned


•
Research all aspects of the hosted service and
product you are purchasing

•
Ensure that a good rapport and service standard
can be expected from the vendor

•
Establish the costing over the years beyond
immediate implementation

•
Weigh up the advantage of hosting with local
management

•
Ensure the content be migrated to another
service in the event that the product fails in the
market place.


Acknowledgement

•
Bart Rutherford


•
Maree

McFarlane


•
Marie Turnbull


•
Richard Turnbull

Contact

Wilma Kurvink

College Head of Library and Information Services

Wesley College Melbourne

Wilma.kurvink@wesleycollege.net