Like a falling apple
I was reminiscing today, back to a time before Talis Source – before what I will conveniently dub the “Newton moment” (eventually a link tenuous enough to justify this photo). Now where was I …..oh yes, I was just telling you about when Talis were first discussing the idea of free resource discovery.
Wow, what a radical idea that was. After all we appeared to have a lot to lose; we were hosting the UK’s largest union catalogue and generating a rather agreeable revenue. With the traditional “we must protect our customer base with our lives” hat on, we did have a lot to lose.
Although, if you study the analytics page on Talis Source you’ll see that the service had pretty much plateaued. That wasn’t anyone’s fault, it simple indicated that the traditional model was restrictive – not every library could participate.
Then came the “Newton moment”, if every library’s holdings could be aggregated and used as one, the value would be unimaginable. Then if that data was totally open, allowing anybody to utilise it in anyway they require, creating a mashup as it were, the potential would be truly breath taking. For instance, it could enable a child to find the resources of any library, anywhere, from the comfort a 3D online digital world or enable an interlibrary loan librarian to easily locate and satisfy the request for a book.
So it became apparent - we needed to provide a solution that would enable such an environment. It would require a very low entry level. Meaning that you would not be charged to contribute data, you would not have to pay a subscription to a service to view everyone else’s data and the database would of course have to be open.
Our solution: the Talis Platform. Free to contribute, free resource discovery and APIs enabling contributed data to be consumed in anyway you wish. Talis Source represents the interlibrary loan element of the Talis Platform and is only one of many methods to view the holdings. Soon there will be many more…..
(Photo taken by strawberryblues displayed in Flickr)
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