Projects

The Library staff work on a number of different development projects to support the needs of our own academic users.  These have the following high-level goals:

• To develop new ways to manage and integrate electronic resources with other applications to ensure resources are made available in the most convenient and usable formats.
  Example projects include:
  Course rooms
  360 Search metasearch
  SFX

• To measure the perceived quality of the Library service among our academic user community in order to establish and track our performance levels as well as identify target areas for future enhancement.
  Example projects include:
  Benchmarking
  LibQUAL

Course rooms

The Course Rooms application is primarily meant as a 'one stop shop' where students can access all the information they need for any course that they are taking.  This includes: general information such as aims and objectives; the topics to be covered and assignments and assessment information; a timetable of sessions, plus online access to course resources.  Resources include any teaching materials required for a specific course. It enables students to have direct access to online materials such as full-text journal articles; working papers; web resources; faculty presentations, case studies and direct access to the library catalogue to check availability of any recommended textbooks.  Students also have access to a course discussion forum and a full class list with an e-mail function.

360 Search metasearch

In April 2007 the Library launched a new metasearch (or "federated search") tool for the School's academic community, called 360 Search.  Available on- and off-campus via the School's Portal, 360 Search enables students, faculty and staff to search the Library's catalogue as well as leading research, news and reference databases simultaneously from a single, simple search form.  Results are seamlessly linked to the corresponding full-text documents (where available).

Besides helping School academic community members find journal articles and books more quickly and productively, 360 Search also provides a powerful search results analysis tool called "clustering".  Clustering in 360 Search dynamically scans the results of each search as they are displayed, building separate linked lists of identified authors, journal titles, subjects and data ranges, which in turn quickly identify underlying patterns, relationships, themes and trends.  Clustered results thus automatically and effortlessly provide further search paths for 360 Search users to explore.  Databases currently searched by 360 Search include Business Source Complete, Factiva, JSTOR, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Science Direct, and Web of Knowledge, together with reference sources such as Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Reference Online and Credo Reference.

Planned developments using 360 Search technologies for release in Summer 2007 include:

• Integration of 360 Search functions into the Library's UNICORN iLink online Library catalogue service
• Customised metasearch solutions using the 360 Search XML-based Application Programming Interface (API)
• 360 Search form added as new option within the Library's highly popular ArticleFinder service
• Integration with Portal's Advanced Search function to add selected Library subscription databases as search targets

360 Search is licensed from Serials Solutions.

SFX

A number of different Library resources now make use of the commercial SFX linking technology. SFX linking involves the use of specially formatted URLs (known as Open URLs) that represent the information within a bibliographic citation. SFX sits in between your bibliographic search criteria and the Library's electronic resources. It converts this bibliographic information into an open URL, which can be interpreted by our participating journal databases to check availability of the publication or article you require. SFX is used for persistent article links in Course Rooms and Faculty Research and will enable full-text article linking from UNICORN, the Library catalogue. By 2004, SFX links had been added to the Business Source Premier, PsycArticles, PsycInfo, Econlit and Web of Knowledge databases to enable users who retrieve an abstract to check other holdings for full-text availability.

Benchmarking

The Library has been benchmarking its performance since 2000. It uses a set of about 20 performance indicators that collect information on four areas of library activity: service availability; resource contention; service take-up; and electronic library services. Since the indicators can be represented as index numbers, we can combine them to produce an overall score of library performance. We have only included measures that are considered important by users in forming their view of what constitutes a quality library service.  All measures are easy to collect and handle. They are consistent over time, and readily comparable with other institutions.  We have disaggregated session data on the use of all electronic resources. The performance indicators are reported monthly on the Portal and quarterly as part of an Information Services Report.

LibQUAL

The Library is the lead library in a European Business Schools Librarians' Group project that uses the LibQUAL+TM  methodology to benchmark library service quality. We conducted a pilot project in 2004 with five libraries and with an expanded group in 2006. LibQUAL compares perceptions of desired and actual performance in three dimensions of library activity: affect of service; information control; and library as place. The 2004 survey showed that all libraries performed well in personal service, but were less successful in information control. This pattern was largely repeated in 2006.  Both surveys have led to changes and developments in the Library.  The next survey is planned for 2008.