GLIMPSE OF A LIBRARY FUTURE

Our second joint seminar with NAG on the e4libraries subject headings scheme was held at CILIP yesterday and was a well-attended and stimulating event. Maggie Sumner, the retired librarian - and ex-chair of NAG - who devised the scheme for us a couple of years ago, made an impassioned plea for using the scheme as the basis for online search of library catalogues, and Ian Manson of Infor showed some impressive examples from Dutch and French libraries of how that could work in practice. Carl McInerney of Peters Bookselling Services, whilst making the point that library suppliers had benefited in the past from the variations in library servicing requirements, persuasively argued that now was the time for a 'step change' towards greater standardisation.

Clearly the library sector is entering a period of extreme stress where all options for cost-saving will have to be considered. BIC has long promoted technical excellence and standardisation as being key to a more efficient service; and attempting to establish the e4libraries scheme as a national standard is one part of that process.

Our next step is to produce a revised and updated version of the scheme in the spring - bringing it into line with the new version 2.1 of the main BIC scheme which we have just published - and, at the same time, set up proper governance procedures and a steering committee to provide a formal structure for change requests and implementation support.

LIBRARY RFID: A MATURING MARKETPLACE?

BIC's publication this week of guidance on compliance with the new ISO 28560 standard for tag structure and content in library RFID is timely. At long last news has come through that the Final Draft International Standard is about to go out to ballot on a two-month timetable and should be published by the middle of 2011.

It's been an uncomfortable few months for the library RFID community. The standard has been disgracefully delayed by purely editorial matters - it's been technically stable for a year or so - and though some libraries have been asking for full compliance with it in their tender documents it hasn't been easy for suppliers to guarantee it.

There are some hopeful signs now. The compliance document spells out exactly what libraries need and suppliers should provide. The RFID Alliance, a grouping of the leading RFID companies, is examining the options for testing compliance. The issues still outstanding from the UK data model - the UK profile of the standard - which BIC published last year are near to being resolved. When that is finalised, we shall be publishing full guidance notes on the use of the data model. And in the new year we shall be publishing - in collaboration with the National Acquisitions Group - an explanatory template for RFID tender documentation to help libraries ask the right questions and get the solutions they want and need.

At the end of this road is a standard for interoperability in library RFID and best practice policies and guidelines which will help the library RFID community to comply with it. That should spell the beginning of the end to the proprietary solutions which have bedevilled the industry since libraries first embraced RFID technology. Not only will libraries have much more freedom of choice in the tags, software and hardware they buy but also open up new opportunities for using RFID to enhance library operations.

BIC AT CILIP'S RFID IN LIBRARIES CONFERENCE

We may be as far away as ever from universal use of radio frequency ID in the trade supply chain, but in the library sector it's now part of the woodwork. CILIP's conference yesterday was the sixth annual event, and although public sector cuts had obviously precluded attendance for some there was still an excellent crowd of interested and committed individuals from the public and academic library communities.

BIC was very much to the fore, with Martin Palmer of Essex Libraries (a member of our operational board) in the chair and our consultants Mick Fortune, Francis Cave and Simon Edwards - and myself - all speaking during the course of the day. The BIC/CILIP RFID in Libraries group has found itself in a pivotal position as the industry moves from the proprietary solutions which have generally prevailed in the past towards a more stable standards-based environment.

Martin Palmer made the point in his closing remarks that all new technologies undergo this shift as they become established and speculated on whether the same may come to be true of the digital supply chain...

A STANDARD CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES

A couple of years ago, with the key support of the MLA, we developed a subset of the BIC Standard Subject Categories for the public library sector. You can see it at http://www.bic.org.uk/51/E4libraries-Subject-Category-Headings/.

It has stirred up a lot of interest in all parts of the library supply chain and is being implemented by a number of library authorities. It offers the opportunity to reduce cost and streamline workflows by automating the categorisation process, and to support further improvements in stock selection, management, discovery and display.

We are now moving ahead with a revised version of the scheme and targeting it very much as a new national standard. We shall be testing this proposition in two joint seminars with the National Acquisitions Group we are holding in York and London over the coming weeks. For details go to http://www.bic.org.uk/e4libraries/.