This afternoon I’m at a meeting of ‘TILE’ (‘Towards Implementation of Library 2.0 and the E-framework’). This is a JISC and SCONUL funded project, that follows on from the JISC/SCONUL sponsored report on Library Systems published earlier this year.

We are starting with an introduction from Ken Chad, one of the consultants on the project. Ken is showing some examples of how ‘web 2.0’ type technologies are coming into the library world – e.g. LibraryThing, the work by David Patten at the University of Huddersfield, California State University. Ken noting that soon after Amazon came out an article was published saying ‘should we do this in libraries’ – i.e. functions like recommendations etc., and we are only starting to see this happen 10 years later – why does it take so long?

Ken mentions MESUR project – collecting usage data (spans 100,00 serials etc.)

So, the two ‘pain points’ that TILE are focusing on are

• ‘Deriving Context’ – in HE we have good contextual information such as the course of study for a student
• ‘Enabling Contribution’ – the value of recommendations etc.

Following this there was some discussion on these two areas, and if there were other areas that the project ought to look at. The overall feeling was these were the correct areas to look at, but a couple of other areas were raised that the project ought to consider:

• The ‘back office’ side of library systems and there integration (with each other – e.g. metadata; and with institutional systems – e.g. Finance)
• The relationship between library systems and repositories, perhaps especially library workflows (e.g. acquisition)

It was also acknowledged that the project couldn’t hope to cover everything, and it was appropriate to focus on a few key areas.

The TILE project would like examples of ‘prototypes’ or ‘exemplars’ of ‘library 2.0’ type services – things like Amazon, LibraryThing etc. – especially examples around the two main points identified above. If you have examples, post a comment here and I’ll pass them on…