Is the Cloud for all Libraries?Wesley College Libraries and Information Services

Wesley College Melbourne

• 3500 Students P-12, 500+ staff• Three metropolitan 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 1st consideration, hosting is 2nd 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 ContentDMDecision 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 KurvinkCollege Head of Library and Information ServicesWesley College MelbourneWilma.kurvink@wesleycollege.net