Middlemash - 30 Nov

To be honest I was a little apprehensive about attending Middlemash as I was worried it would be very "techie". But having followed the previous mashed librares event on Twitter earlier this year I was keen to go and find out more. As it turned out I needn't have worried there were a good range of people there, I didn't feel out of my depth and a real range of topics and projects were covered.

The morning started with a series of short talks (slides from some of the presentations are on Slideshare:

SFX/ Metalib Day School - 20 Oct 09

As with last year's day school this was a really interesting and useful day, especially being able to speak to people who actually work on the systems and see what other institutions are doing.

Metasearch through Xerxes (Graham Seaman - RHU)

RHU have implemented Xerxes on top of Metalib to provide a improved user interface following negative feedback from the NSS. Set up had been fairly straightforward - at RHU it was done over one summer and knowledge of PHP and XSLT was needed. No formal feedback from users as yet but informal feedback suggests users like the new interface (and although not promoted the old Metalib interface can still be accessed). I think it's a definite improvement on the current Metalib interface but as someone in the audience pointed out - why are we having to user Xerxes to do this, why don't Ex Libris improve the Metalib interface? You can see the RHU implementation at http://xerxes.rhul.ac.uk/

PTFS Evergreen demo - 1 Oct 09

PTFS Europe are one of a number of companies which provide support for Open Source LMS their key message being ‘you don’t need to do it yourself’. They provide support for both Koha (for small to medium sized libraries) and Evergreen (designed for consortia, scalable, suitable for academic and public libraries). Whilst there are a few UK customers for Koha there is not yet an Evergreen customer (although apparently there is some interest).

PTFS offer support, carry out software development, offer hosting (and prefer this) and apply upgrades/ patches but you retain control and can access server.

Open Source software is not free as there is still a cost of ownership (staff time, resources, infrastructure) but does have lower costs. Financial savings come from:

• No software licensing costs
• Savings on annual maintenance (a rough example was if you are currently paying £30K this would probably reduce to £15K including hosting)
• Lower hosting costs and daily rate for development services (PTFS have lower operating costs as operate a virtual office)

Open Source software allows greater freedom as you can move between vendors, develop as you wish, share and collaborate (e.g. share costs of developments / benefit from others developments). A release little and often approach is taken to updates and patches so bugs can be fixed quickly. Developments can be delivered quickly (for example, a library with Koha wanted to display borrower names next to loans and this took 2 days to deliver).

OS LMS are popular where there is good local support e.g. France, Canada, US, India. OS LMS are currently the biggest source of new LMS installations in the US.

Demo of Evergreen (http://open-ils.org/)
Evergreen does not yet have all the modules expected in an LMS – there is not yet a Acquisitions/ Serials module (although these will be available in the next release in Spring 2010). However, a number of libraries are running it including some US/ Canadian academic libraries (see full list at http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=evergreen_libraries ). An ILL module will be developed after the next release. The OPAC had many of the features of the ‘next gen’ OPACs.

The features that are available in the current version are:
OPAC – Google style search syntax / Bookbags (save records) & RSS feeds / customisable skins / book jackets etc / faceting / relevance ranking / FRBRisation / ‘slimpac’ for mobile & accessible view

• Self service
• Cataloguing
• Reporting interface
• Offline circulation
• User and staff interfaces

A demo of the OPAC is available from http://demo.gapines.org/

Slides from the presentations can be seen at http://www.ptfs-europe.com (I have a login for this)

Mobile learning: what is it? 26 Sept 09

I attended the MMIT Conference in September to find out more about mobile learning, particularly with a view to finding out how we could use mobile technologies in the library at Salford Uni. The day focused on how m-learning is being used in education as a whole rather than specifically in libraries.

The key points I took away from the day were:

• It's still very much a developing field and it's hard to predict what will happen in the future (who could have predicted how popular iphones/ netbooks would be 5 years ago)
• Current focus is on ambient learning / augmented reality - see demos of the GE website on Youtube - I don'yt have a webcam but really want to try it e.g.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RVyuaFn3Qk
• Students want to use their own devices (and not have something else to carry around), This also has the benefit of embedding it in their own devices.
  
• The benefit comes from the flexibility of the devices rather than the devices themselves
• Oxford Uni are doing lots of work in the area including library related projects
• Jon Trinder's presentation contains lots of links to more info on m-learning which is where i'll be heading to find out more and start thinking about what we could/should be doing http://www.slideshare.net/jontrinder/mmit-mobile-learning 

See behind the cut for a full write up of the day ...