...In 2009 there were over 12.2 million holdings in public libraries.
We have been running this project so fast we still have not come up with a name for it! But we’ll have one soon – there’s a regional competition happening as I write.
Hutt City, Porirua, Kapiti, WelTec and Masterton (including UCOL) libraries have signed up to a shared services project based around the SPYDUS Library Management System. The LMS is hosted by vendor, Civica, out of their Auckland data centre.
Stage One sees the Libraries migrating their server setup to the data centre; Stage Two - the merging of bibliographic data into a single database; and Stage Three - allowing the use of a single card across all member libraries.
Porirua, Hutt and Weltec are currently testing their systems on the new server. With each of the five libraries going live from July through to November, we are anticipating the bibliographic merge happening over the summer. Stage three is scheduled for 2011.
The structure allows individual member libraries to maintain their own policies within their own institutional block of the system if they wish and is based on consortia architecture currently used by Spydus customers in Australia, Singapore and the UK.
Kicked off in mid 2009, the initiative saw CEOs sign a memorandum of commitment in December 2009 and is underway since May. Now we just have to find a zippy name!