Is the Cloud for all Libraries Wesley College

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 – Content. DM, 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 18762013 • ‘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 Content. DM 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 Content. DM • 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 Mc. Farlane • Marie Turnbull • Richard Turnbull

Contact Wilma Kurvink College Head of Library and Information Services Wesley College Melbourne Wilma. kurvink@wesleycollege. net