Hands-on training for staff

The Resource Discovery Forum has had a busy summer break despite having no formal meetings. As well as continuing to test the new system and providing lots of useful feedback for the project team, RDF members have been helping with training staff.

We've held a number of hands-on training sessions for Library and IC staff. Each session was led by a member of the project team with RDF members available to answer questions and offer advice to trainees. The sessions followed a standard format: first, there was a brief presentation on what the new resource discovery layer is and what it does; next trainees worked through a booklet of exercises based on tasks frequently carried out on the catalogue by Library customers - e.g. requesting an item, searching for a specific item, searching for information on a particular topic, and so on. The idea was to give staff an opportunity to experience the main functionality of the new system in a friendly and informal environment.

We invited feedback after each session and the overall impression has been good so far. Trainees were encouraged to take away the worksheets so they could continue to explore the system at their own pace. We also provided a contact email for questions, comments or feedback. Depending on developments over the next few months, we may consider offering more sessions later in the semester.

Staff training and federated search

May's Resource Discovery Forum gave us the chance to discuss how Library colleagues would be introduced to the new resource discovery layer in advance of its launch. The resource discovery layer is designed to be an intuitive system, but staff still need to feel confident using it from a customer perspective in order to provide appropriate support. RDF members felt that we had gained sufficient experience of the system over the past few months to be able to assist with training colleagues. We thought we could provide informal hands-on sessions with scenarios based on common tasks most likely to be carried out by customers. Hopefully, these sessions will demonstrate the greatly extended functionality of the system compared to our current Star catalogue.

Some of the extended functionality comes from MetaLib, our new federated search system. Before the training discussion, there was time for a brief presentation about MetaLib. We bought the system with the intention of making it available to customers through the new resource discovery layer. We plan to use it to offer our A-Z list of databases through the resource discovery layer, and to offer subject-specific groups of databases to cross search. We think it will provide a quick, easy way for customers to access the Library's bibliographic and other databases, and a neat fit with the resource discovery layer to offer a one-stop shop for locating print and electronic resources.

Welcome to the Resource Discovery Forum

We've recently purchased a new next generation library catalogue and resource discovery layer.  The selected product is called Primo and it's produced by Ex Libris, a leading provider of all types of library systems (our existing digital content discovery service, Find it @ Sheffield, is powered by another Ex Libris product).  So, why have we bought a new library catalogue at a time like this?  Like all traditional online library catalogues, our existing Star catalogue lacks the functionality required of a modern discovery and delivery solution specifically designed to handle growing digital collections.  The new (yet to be named) catalogue/resource discovery layer should present a vastly improved customer experience with a single point of access for searching all the Library's collections.  As well as locally held materials, our customers will be able to search for materials in digital repositories such as White Rose Research Online, and for subscribed ebooks, ejournals and databases available from third party vendors.  Searches can return article-level results, and context-sensitive facets (things like topic, date, location) plus relevance ranking can enable refinement of results post-search, helping our customers select the most appropriate resources for their needs.

The Library's project to implement the new catalogue/resource discovery layer has been running for a few months now with lots of 'behind the scenes' work going on to set up the system and get our existing data into it.  The Resource Discovery Forum has been formed to work alongside the project group to provide a wider, more customer-focused perspective of some of the issues.  We're a sizeable group (around thirty members), representing a broad spectrum of the Library's operations.  We include customer service staff involved in frontline service delivery, systems and metadata specialists (the experts on the technical aspects of both the system and the data), librarians with experience of information literacy education and the specialist requirements of our researchers, and staff responsible for supporting our customers with additional needs.

The Resource Discovery Forum aims to get a view from every possible angle on things like interface look and feel, quality of the user experience, and quality of the data.  Initially, we'll be meeting on a monthly basis to discuss these issues, and to get involved in 'hands on' tasks such as testing and training.  We plan to use this blog to keep you updated with our news and progress, and we hope you enjoy following us on our journey over the coming months.