Talis Source Blog

There have been several requests from Talis Source contributors (I suspect UnityUK are receiving the same requests from their contributors) . They have asked why we don’t have a single mechanism to contribute to both Talis Source and UnityUK? This is a very sensible request as this removes the duplication of effort and reduces the burden of contribution for our shared customers with the benefits being shared by all.

So would Talis support this request? Would we be able or even willing to actually do this? Well the answer is a resounding yes to all questions from Talis. We would be willing and able to increase the ease in which people can contribute to and benefit from our architecture of participation, providing that this is a reciprocal arrangement and as is the case now when contributing to Talis Source, there should be no form of cost incurred by the data supplier.

Therefore we have approached UnityUK directly for their input in to how we can actually work “together” to achieve this and we await their response. In the meantime, please feel free to communicate with either Talis or UnityUK if this is a course of action you would wish to pursue. Together we can all make this happen.

Our contributions from Talis Source users continue to go from strength to strength. We have processed our 50 millionth record already this year with 30 million of those records having been processed in the last 8 weeks. This has increased our holdings count to over 48 million and it is increasing by the day.

Many thanks for all your contributions.

Posted by at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had an e-mail this morning from the Bib Services Officer of a library authority that shall remain nameless. It ran along the lines of:

As we keep receiving requests from Talis Source for items from our catalogue, I request that XXXXXXXXX' data is removed asap. We will respond politely, declining to loan for the remainder of this month.

Question:
Why is this authority refusing to service requests from a large proportion of libraries just because of the system they are choosing to use? Is that really the point we have reached?

I can recall in the days of UnityWeb and V3, that some libraries used both systems and therefore contributed to both systems, and nobody called upon those libraries to nail their colours to the mast and come down on one side, but this is clearly what this library expects.

Let's not lose track of why Talis Source and other services are there, to enable libraries to satisfy the demands of their users, through a network of interlending that is self-sustaining. So, why try to scupper the efforts of some libraries by withdrawing your data, just because you don't like their preferred service provider? If we take that rationale to its natural conclusion we end up with one system and one supplier, which strikes me as a very difficult scenario for libraries to potentially find themselves in.

We take the opposite view, that actually you should be making your data accessible in numerous ways and in numerous places. Which is why your data is not being contributed to Talis Source, the application. Its being contributed to a Platform, which other ILL applications will be able to use. So, is that library really going to object to making their holdings accessible to an ILL application developed by their own LMS provider, for instance? We'll see.

Posted by at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When trying to explain what we are trying to achieve with Talis Source, I keep coming back to the phenomenon that is, Skype. For those who are not familiar with the extraordinary emergence of Skype in the telecommunications industry, let me elaborate.

Skype offers free calls over the internet. Which means that by registering with Skype on your PC, and equipping yourself with a handset, you can start to make calls anywhere in the world free-of-charge. It has managed to do this by creating an infrastructure that is self-supporting. It is the users that sustain the infrastructure, not Skype.

When you power up Skype on your PC you are allowing Skype to have access to your spare processing power and net connections to provide a collective resource that routes yours and others' calls. As a result, Skype can sustain a massive network of users without any centralised infrastructure or more to the point, cost base. And the result is that, they can afford to pour back the benefits of this cooperative effort to the users themselves, in the shape of free calls, anywhere in the world, the only thing you have to do is register. Oh, and you can only make free calls to another user of Skype. So, naturally the first thing you do is get all your best friends and family - particularly those living overseas - to register as well, spreading Skype like a virus and making it almost overnight one of the most successful telecommunications companies in the world. Skype is one of the most astonishing examples of how the web has enabled collaborative sharing – in this case of computing power and connections – to be utilised to benefit its community of users in a very real sense.

So, how does this equate with what we are trying to achieve with Talis Source? Well, rather than asking libraries to share processing power, we're asking them to share their data, by contributing it to the Talis Platform. And in return, we too are pouring back the benefit by giving libraries access to search and view this enormous resource of bibliographic and holdings data (47.2 million holdings records at last time of counting) free-of-charge.

I don't want to overplay the comparison, but I think its important to see that there are different companies out there in different industries that are pursuing this model in order to harness the support and participation of users. And where it's happening there are real win-wins being achieved.

Technorati Tags: resource sharing, Skype, The Network Effect,

Posted by at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After last month's record breaking performance, we have continued to operate at 400% of our normal operational capacity, having processed 9.3 million records this month to date. Our pre-work in expanding and scaling Talis Source is paying dividends.

The contributions keep coming thick and fast so thank you for contributing and let’s keep them coming to make this another record month. If you are having difficulties in contributing, then please contact holdings@talis.com.

If you are a Talis customer, then let us help ease the burden of contribution. We will automate the whole process for you and of course, the script is free, the service is free and it is free to contribute your data. This script is deployed and operating across 40% of all Talis Customers.

For other libraries with:
Heritage systems - we can convert data on your behalf based on your normal data export.
Dynix systems - we are talking to people who are actively contributing to Talis Source to gather information and code snippets to pass on to others to help in the process.
DS customers - there is a script available from the DS Helpdesk that when run produces the data submission.
LinkUK users - we can convert the normal contribution file on your behalf.

Of course, there are other systems out there and we would be keen that libraries using those systems can also contribute to the community. If you are a user of a system we haven't mentioned, and you have a method for contribution, please contact us at: source@talis.com, and perhaps we can also share this information? Of course, the plaudits are for those that pass on the information.

And in the true spirit of providing an architecture of participation, all conversions and submissions are free and having contributed, don’t forget to claim your free resource discovery and free access to Talis Source.

And finally.....
We will soon pass the 100 millionth record processed for contributing to Talis Platform, and we are about to process our 50 millionth record in 2006. Which means that you can search and view nearly 50 million records and holdings in Talis Source.

Many thanks for your continuing support.

Posted by at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The latest Talis Source communication went out last week - I thought it was worth updating those not on the mailing with the relevant details.

Get the facts from the new Talis Source website (www.talis.com/source)
We've relaunched the Talis Source website. Contributions to the Talis Platform are accelerating, so the new website give you the facts and figures on:
• The numbers of records we are processing;
• The rate of growth of holdings and bibliographic records;
• The numbers of new contributions to the service;

The Talis Source subscription period has begun
In the last 4 weeks, 90% of former UnityWeb subscribers have opted to move over to Talis Source. If you would like to register for:
• Free resource discovery in Talis Source
• Or, a subscription to full ILL requesting in Talis Source
• Or, a trial period to the full Talis Source service
You can do so at: www.talis.com/source.

It’s getting larger…
We have new subscribers which means - new contributions. For instance, we have seen a 300% increase in participation from HE libraries, putting us on track to reach our next milestone of 50 million holdings in the Talis Platform. Contributors we are working with, or have committed to contribute include:

Bridgwater College, Camden Libraries, Cardiff County Council, City of Westminster College, Coventry City Libraries, Herefordshire Library and Information Service, Kingston University, Leeds Metropolitan University, Merthyr Tydfil Libraries, National Library of Medicine (US), Newman College of HE, St Mary’s University College, Staffordshire County Council, Swansea Institute, Thames Valley University, Trinity College Dublin, University of Birmingham, University of Cardiff, University of East London, University of Glamorgan, University of Huddersfield, University of Leeds, University of Limerick, University of Plymouth, University of St Andrew’s, University of Sunderland, University of Swansea, University of Teeside, University of Worcester, UWIC, Worcestershire Libraries

And Welsh libraries get even more!
CyMAL have launched a Portal project called “@Your Library Wales”. The Portal aims to provide unified access to both electronic reference resources and library book holdings throughout Wales over the next two years. The application makes use of a number of services from Talis’ new technology platform, including a holdings service.

Any library in Wales contributing their holdings to the Talis Platform can automatically update Talis Source and the CyMAL portal simultaneously.

Commenting on this innovative approach, Peter Simmonds, Business Development Manager for the Portal said, “The platform approach of Talis has enabled us to focus on developing the user experience and not worry about how we would access the data from libraries spread all over Wales.”

And further portal projects are currently underway:
Sara Marsh, Deputy Director at University of Swansea said:
“From my point of view we're glad to be part of a new development and working with partners who have gone out of their way to make it easy for us to contribute our data, and we look forward to working with other libraries in our region who may be able to contribute data also so that we can pilot a cross-catalogue search service for the Swansea Bay area.”

Any Welsh libraries that would like to ensure their holdings data is refreshed should contact holdings@talis.com.

Major UK LMS vendors convene to discuss resource sharing
On 9th May, AdLib, DS, Ex Libris, Innovative Interfaces, IS Oxford, SirsiDynix and Talis took part in a Research Day. The focus of the event was to discuss the lowering of technical and cost barriers for libraries to enable them to contribute their data to regional and national resource discovery systems.

There was widely shared consensus in the room that vendors could play their part in making it easier for libraries to liberate their data.

Dave Errington, CEO of Talis said: “I think that the vendor community is ready to work together to make sharing data easier. The days of data being locked into costly Library Management System silos are coming to an end and that’s good for the library domain as a whole.”

The meeting offered vendors the first opportunity to discuss how they would like their ILL Request or Library Management systems to interoperate with the holdings data in the Talis Platform. Any libraries interested in participating in this discussion should contact source@talis.com for further information.

Posted by at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's an interesting term that generally has widespread understanding amongst librarians and those who work with librarians but has no sense of meaning to those outside library walls other than in a very literal sense.

Libraries have resources and they want to share them. Let's leave aside human resources for now, although we shouldn't forget the human efforts that can be deployed to resolve community-wide issues. In that sense, are the numerous virtual reference/ask a librarian type initiatives that are underway, a type of resource sharing?

I was pleased to find out that there is effort being expended Stateside at the moment to rethink resource sharing. The various discussions and intellectual output that is being generated has been made available at: http://blog.aclin.org/. Although you have to register to access a lot of the material.

It was interesting to read Ted Koppel's blog entry on demolishing the narrow constructs we have put on defining resource sharing:

I'm struck by one consistent theme - that resource sharing (in this context) is the equivalent of interlibrary loan. The two phrases seem to be used interchangeably.

That is simply wrong. Resource sharing - in my definition - covers a far broader scope. It can include consortial reciprocal borrowing, it should include ILL, but to be relevant for the future it cannot stop there. It must include Google (and other similar) book and journal delivery efforts. It must include patron (ugh, how I hate that word) provoked as well as library provoked activities. And by my definition, resource sharing should include document delivery and similar commercial services. They're part of the continuum.

Limiting the definition of resource sharing to the narrowness of interlibrary loan is tantamount to sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring the changed information landscape. If this initiative only defines resource sharing as ILL, then we're not reinventing anything - we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I think what Ted alludes to is that search and discovery of resources is very much wed to the subsequent sharing of such resources. They have a symbiotic relationship. So resource sharing should be about a whole host of things that we as libraries and librarians do, to promote our wares for all to see, not hiding them away behind walls or in the confines of our own web catalogues. How many of us thought that by creating a web view of our catalogues, we were actuallly making our collections more accessible? It would be nice to think we all did, but if we look at the quality and the navigability of some of these sites, we would find ourselves sadly mistaken. So then it becomes a ticking the box exercise, something that we do to meet various national or institutional agendas.

It is also valuable to think about resource sharing in this way because it stops becoming a backroom activity. We often hear ILL staff lament the fact that ILL is frequently regarded at senior levels as something that goes on behind the scenes. The knock-on effect of that attitude is that ILL units are frequently understaffed and under-resourced. By turning it on its head, and promoting resource sharing as very much a frontline service, it acquires the importance it needs and deserves.

The Research Team at Talis have started to experiment with the holdings from the Talis Platform to show how data that has previously been closeted in union catalogues that only ILL staff could access, could easily be made accessible to any member of the public. This is not simply done by making the union catalogue free to view, which is of course one way of doing things, but can be achieved through taking the data to where the user wants to view it. In other words, taking the data to the user's interface of choice.

So, what's different about this Amazon page?

Click for a larger view

A new box has appeared on the right-hand side of the page displaying the relevant library holdings information for that particular title. And how has this come about? We've used a plug-in from Greasemonkey to display that data in the browser. We did it because we wanted to demonstrate how easy it is for data to be brought to the user at the point when the user might need it. We assume that a user who goes to Amazon is actually looking to buy a book. Perhaps. But if that book isn't available to buy new or second-hand, maybe that user is prepared to borrow the book instead in order to have his/her query ultimately satisfied?

Working on the principle that resource sharing is about a) providing the mechanisms for making collections more accessible, and b) furnishing items to the user - I think that this could be a considered as an example of innovation in the resource sharing space. And of course there are many others, which we would be keen to hear about.

Redefining resource sharing to encapsulate not only the work that takes place behind the scenes to get resources to the customer, but also the work that takes place to point the user to our materials in the first place reinvigorates the discussion. And as Ted Koppel points out, we need to take resource sharing out of the very restricted definition of ILL only, in order to breathe new life into it.

Technorati Tags: resource sharing, Amazon,

Posted by at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It so happened that when we announced Talis Source back in March we were at a FIL event at the British Library. We gave out packs of information to a room full of largely academic librarians, many of whom had not used Source's predecessor - UnityWeb and therefore had not contributed holdings to it. There had been a much larger contingent of academic libraries using UnityWeb in earlier days when there seemed to be many more academic institutional members of The Combined Regions, but when academic libraries withdrew from membership to that organisation, we got requests for their holdings also to be removed. A step I never quite understood - why should membership to any organisation negate the need for such a broad-ranging and extensive union catalogue as UnityWeb, to be maintained?

Perhaps the fortunes and objectives of UnityWeb were inseparably associated with The Combined Regions. Although, I know from regular meetings with TCR Board that we were always encouraging of new contributors - and it was never dependent on membership. There was also an issue relating to the ability of the software to take Marc21 data - something I'm happy to say we have now overcome. Or perhaps, UnityWeb was too closely allied to the objectives of interlending - again something which we are trying to overcome by enabling free access to search and discover - whatever an institutions' objectives are for doing that - whether they be for the purposes of ILL or otherwise. By removing the costs associated with search and discovery, we hope to create a much broader church of users.

Early signs are very encouraging - particularly from an academic perspective. Following on from our announcement that the National Library of Wales has endorsed the Talis Platform, by contributing its holdings, we have had several academic libraries either contributing for the first time, or refreshing their contributions after a period of not having done so.

These numbers include:
Bridgwater College
City of Westminster College
New College, Swindon
Roehampton University
Somerset College of Arts & Technology
Swansea Institute
Trinity College, Dublin
University of Dublin
University of East London
University of Sunderland
University of Surrey
Swansea University
University of Worcester

and there are a few more large academic libraries in the pipeline, that I will mention shortly. But its a great start to an exciting project.

Technorati Tags: resource sharing, resource discovery, Talis Platform,

Posted by at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The new Talis Source website will be available shortly, and I'd like to draw everyone's attention to the section on Analytics.

Firstly, I should say that this is just the start. We're hoping to increase the amount of facts and figures we have on here over the coming months. But what we have so far makes pretty interesting reading. Well, it does to me, as I have always suffered from a fascination with not just analysing stats, but in their generation.

Here's a graph denoting the growth in holdings from 2005/06

Levels of holdings data were largely unchanged throughout 2005, levelling off at around 41 million holdings. In 2006, we experienced levels of contribution started to rise as Talis took over responsibility for data contribution. In April 2006, we undertook an extensive data cleaning exercise, before loading a substantial sum of new records which have actually took us past the 42 million mark in the middle of May.

The Live Services team are doing a great job, but an even better one is being done by all those libraries that are starting to understand what it means to contribute to the Talis Platform, a free means to discover and share their holdings with other like-minded institutions. Initially, for many of you participating, you're going to be using Talis Source to view these holdings. But, moving forward, we should start to see these holdings appearing in all sorts of places as developers start to use our web services to expose these where either you are interacting or your users. For those at the road shows, you may have seen the Amazon plug-in we are testing, which basically puts a small list unobtrusively within the Amazon pages where you can see libraries holding the book that someone is considering buying. We should also start to see, following our recent research day with many other LMS vendors, these holdings starting to be integrated directly into your LMS. Why? Well, that's what you've been asking for. You don't want to be moving from one application to search, to another to request - it should be a seamless workflow. Hopefully, we'll start seeing more of this starting to happen in the future...

Anyhow, stats! I'm interested to find out from you what you'd like to see shown on this page. If its possible, I'll look into generating it. So, give it some thought and post any ideas directly to me or as comments below.

Posted by Ian Corns at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)