Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal October 2006 Volume 4(5)

Resource sharing

Building on networks: resource sharing in Scotland – an update

In response to Chris Pinder’s article , Elaine Fulton explores the resource sharing agenda and updates readers on SLIC’s involvement in the development of a national entitlement card for services across Scotland.

Scotland has a long history of library co-operation at local regional and national level. One of the key priorities for the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) is co-ordination and collaboration that meet Scottish needs. When the pilot Inspire project was first mooted, SLIC was asked to consider the proposal and participate. However it was felt that the project would in fact be a retrograde step for many well established local and regional networks for co-operation.

SLIC initially was represented by Dorothy Browse of Fife Council Library Service on the Inspire Advisory Group to keep a watching brief. As Inspire developed and its aspirations became clearer, it emerged that SLIC was already supporting a series of projects and initiatives which suited the needs and context of libraries in Scotland. It was felt there was little added value in being part of the scheme for most services and that we should build on the success of our own networks, rather than re-invent the wheel.

These very well established collaboration networks such as Ayrshire Libraries Forum, Grampian Information, Tayside and Fife Libraries Network, Glasgow Area Libraries Together worked well because the ownership of the co-operation was meaningful and engaging.

A major area of activity is making sure that people can find what they want, first and foremost. Therefore, a national concerted effort was, and continues to be made, to ensure that public, higher education and further education catalogues can be cross-searched using the embryonic CAIRNS service and Scottish Collections Network (SCONE ), which will widen the range of resources available to all.

The Digital Scotland agenda and developing a distributed information infrastructure for Scotland has had a huge influence on the approach to resource sharing and the lifelong learning agenda. The different structures and organisations means it is not always easy or relevant to translate a scheme that was developed in England to fit Scottish needs. SLIC was working with a number of different partners in Scotland to develop referral and support for learners and users, including learndirect Scotland, Scottish Enterprise, Learning and Teaching Scotland amongst others to develop wide services which met the lifelong learning agenda in Scotland.

There are now a number of projects which are at the forefront of developments in Scotland. The University of Abertay and Dundee City Council are running a successful scheme using smartcard technology which enables students, members of the public and schools to access services using this technology.

In a further development related to this, SLIC has been approached by the Customer First division of the Improvement Service. The Improvement Service is a partnership between the Scottish Executive, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE). The service is devoted to improving the efficiency, quality and accountability of public services through learning, sharing knowledge and delivering improvement solutions. One of its features is the introduction of a National Entitlement Card for transport, young people and public libraries in Scotland. This development fits beautifully with our priorities and aspirations, this programme offers the opportunity to enable library entitlements in a real and meaningful way, which will be wider than public libraries.

The heart of the project is to move to a position where citizens have one card, which entitles them to use services across Scotland. To do this library management systems need to be compliant with the national technical standard but we also need services to be willing to engage. This programme will move forward in 2007 with public library services becoming “entitlement enabled” between now and summer 2008.

All library services will need to consider how a national entitlement card will impact on their services. They will need to consider how to allow people to access different kinds of services as possession of the card means they are registered on a national database for service delivery.

The Scottish landscape is a vibrant one and the Resource Sharing Scotland project is the other side of the coin to providing the technical infrastructure. This project is examining some of the real issues involved in sharing resources with other organisations and the vision of users being able to access services without the need for mediation from library staff to borrow material from other services.

Granted there is still a long way to go to engage and embed the practice. However, by building on existing good collaboration networks, the combination of these two projects will provide a platform for seamless delivery of services in Scotland which goes beyond Inspire.

Elaine Fulton is Director of CILIPS and SLIC (Scottish Library and Information Council).

Information Scotland Vol. 4(5) October 2006

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