Tuesday 25 May 2010

Project background

The South West Wales Higher Education Partnership is a HEFCW-funded partnership involving Swansea University, Swansea Metropolitan University and Trinity University College, Carmarthen, aimed at establishing greater collaboration in services provided by the three institutions.

The partnership covers many areas of university activity (see http://www.swwhep.ac.uk), including the libraries, where collaborative services are being developed as a “Virtual Academic Library”. Among other things, the Virtual Academic Library will deliver a shared resource discovery platform, incorporating both print and electronic materials and facilitating a seamless recipical borrowing regime.

The discovery platform consists of two elements brought together in a single interface : in-house resource disovery using the open-source VuFind, and e-resource discovery and delivery via ExLibris’s MetaLib and SFX. The case study will focus primarily on the VuFind aspect, including our own developments to provide simultaneous connection to three separate library management systems and other enhanced functionality.