Transitioning a Vision to Reality: The Wales Higher Education Library Forum (WHELF) Shared Library

Project

Gareth Owen, Programme Manager,

WHELF

Mark Hughes, Head of Collections, Swansea University

Image from Cornelia Kopp - https://flic.kr/p/7AU4Rp

So, who or what is WHELF anyway?

• Wales Higher Education Libraries Forum

• Grouping drawn from all the higher education institutions in Wales

• Mission:

– promote library and information services co-operation

– to encourage the exchange of ideas

– to provide a forum for mutual support

– help facilitate new initiatives in library and information service provision

Image from WHELF: http://bit.ly/1NZOPAm

The WHELF Strategy

• Student Experience

• Research and Enterprise

• International and Globalised University

• Workforce Development

• Marketing and Promotion

• Shared Library Management System

Ken Teegardinhttps://flic.kr/p/anuxT7

Share an LMS, Share a Smile

Image from Doug88888 https://flic.kr/p/ahtfAJ

• North America – OrbisCascade

• Canada – Conifer, OCUL

• Europe – BibSys, Libis

• UK – Bloomsbury Group

• Welsh Public Libraries

• …and many, many more!

It’s a vision thing…

1UpLego: https://flic.kr/p/eFx2PJ

A collaborative platform and shared service to provide mutual benefit to the member institutions, their users, and Welsh Higher Education overall

An engine to provide further collaboration opportunities and enable member libraries to share data and services more effectively

11 88

600 170,000

Partners Libraries

Staff Customers

6Different

LMS’

Scope and Scale

10,000,000Bibliographic records

Scope and Scale

The Next Generation game…

• More than just a marketing label

• Print and Electronic integration

• Unified workflows• Cloud hosted &

dynamically scaleable

• Collaboration baked in

Marsmettn Talahassee https://flic.kr/p/njDevb

Sharing..

• Procurement Process

• The selected platform

• Implementation

• Development

• Expertise & knowledge

• Development

• Data, data, data!

Image from RyanC https://flic.kr/p/dA7Vg

• More seamless experience

• Wales wide discovery

• Easy access

• More & better resources

What’s in for us – the users?

Betsy Weber: https://flic.kr/p/dX3K49

What’s in for us – the institutions?

Toban B: https://flic.kr/p/6KqdcF

• Cost Saving -process

• Cost Saving - ongoing

• Shared development

• Shared knowledge

• Business process refresh

• Shared data

• ..and all that opens up!

Managing the transition

Making the vision a reality

Challenges

Stages of the process

Managing the process

Lessons learned

Stephen Shore

Challenges

Joel Meyerowitz

‘What are the challenges and how would you overcome them?’

Diverse group of institutions

Geographically dispersed

Limited tools for engagement

Agile governance

One size doesn’t fit all -different approaches for different stages

Pre-procurement

Procurement

Implementation

Business not as usual

Diane Arbus

Pre-procurement

Getting everyone on board

Horizon scanning

Building the case

Political buy-in

Developing resources

Lee Friedlander

Procurement

Evaluating the product

EU procurement

Evaluation framework

Tool-kit for engagement

The resultsPaul Reas

Implementation roadmap

Managing a large scale implementation

Phased implementation

Ex Libris Support

Institutional Project teams

WHELF support

Paul Seawright

Post-implementation

Gathering the fruit

Enabling benefits

Collaboration opportunities

Managing the process

William Eggleston

Lessons learned

Time to reflect on the process

Valuable lessons

Could have done some things better

Did a lot right

Maurice Broomfield

Questions

Please feel free to ask any questions

Go raibh maith agaibh

Diolch yn fawr

Thank you

Martin Parr