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BUILDER Hybrid Library Project: Strategic Themes and Operational Issues

Michele Shoebridge
BUILDER project director

Andrew Hampson

BUILDER project development officer

Abstract

This paper reports on results from the BUILDER Hybrid Library Project in phase 3 of the UK's Electronic Libraries programme (eLib) and discusses the project's impact in an institutional context. Strategic themes in implementing hybrid library services are identified. These include: IT infrastructure, human resources, partnerships, academic liaison, managing change and integration of research and development into mainstream service offerings. These themes are backed up by examples at an operational level and findings from the project's evaluation activities are reported. The paper discusses the project's fit with institutional goals and its contribution to mission-critical areas such as managed learning environments (MLEs) and the shift towards a web-enabled campus.

Introduction

Integration of both electronic and physical information resources is key to the hybrid library, as it aims to provide access to local and remote information resources in a range of formats, offering training and guidance at the point of access. This has been one of the major challenges faced by all five hybrid library projects [1] in phase 3 of the UK's Electronic Libraries (eLib) programme [2]. The hybrid library (or 'gateway library' [3]) takes the web as its delivery mechanism and, from this one access point, customers should be able to have direct access to the electronic information they are entitled to and be able to search for and locate relevant physical resources.

Each of the eLib hybrid library projects had a particular emphasis to their research and development. The BUILDER Project, based at the University of Birmingham, had a specific remit to investigate the development of a hybrid library within an individual institution. This has involved both technical developments to produce practical demonstrators and pilot services and also evaluation of the impact of the evolving model of the hybrid library on a range of stakeholders including students, academics, information services staff and administrative staff.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the deliverables which have come out of the project and outline the operational issues and strategic themes which have emerged during the project's three year duration from 1998 - 2000. Externals factors beyond the hybrid library are also discussed as, during the project's lifetime, the web has moved even further centre-stage in enabling higher education institutions to deliver their missions. Many of the issues which have been focused on by BUILDER in a hybrid library context, such as authentication and personalised library interfaces, have emerged as wider institutional priorities as the University of Birmingham moves towards establishing a web-enabled campus. To that extent, BUILDER has contributed to and influenced wider institutional debates (on student portals, managed learning environments, e-commerce and electronic document delivery) and has also been influenced itself by the sheer pace of change and by both national and international initiatives and agendas.

A model of the hybrid library

BUILDER's vision of the hybrid library involves a number of key elements and services being drawn together to form a coherent model. Users of the hybrid library are students or members of staff at the university. Either way, the first screen on entering the hybrid library is an authentication gateway where the user is asked to input a username and password.

In the BUILDER context, an authentication solution was developed based on user information stored in the University of Birmingham's library management system, Talis. Users input information displayed on their University ID Card. The information against which users are verified in the library management system is: name, department and status (undergraduate, postgraduate or staff). This information offers the potential for establishing who is accessing the hybrid library and therefore providing an information landscape of potential resources to meet their needs.

The model of the hybrid library developed by BUILDER aims to demonstrate a seamless interface which provides access to a range of diverse materials in a functionally and graphically consistent way. An example of BUILDER's hybrid library interface, configured according to a user's profile is shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: BUILDER's hybrid library demonstrator

[image not supplied]

The key to the interface in Figure 1 is that it provides one view of a range of services, defined according to the profile of the individual who has authenticated and accessed the hybrid library. It is a way of simplifying and providing a route into a complex information environment.

The model of the hybrid library already outlined was not going to be realised straight away. In the initial project plan this model was broken into six modules for initial investigation and development. The specific pilot services and demonstrators to come out of each Project module are outlined in Figure 2, along with the key issues to have emerged from that development.

Figure 2: BUILDER Project modules: pilot services and demonstrators mapped onto key issues in hybrid library development

The project used an iterative approach to development, focusing initially on each module separately in order to produce specific pilot products and demonstrators. The methodology followed was: brainstorming, research and development, release of prototype, evaluation. The evaluation results then fed back into further development of the prototype product or service. The final hybrid library demonstrator was produced in November 2000. This provides a practical demonstration of how these separate products and demonstrators could be integrated, using the infrastructure and elements researched and developed during the course of the project, into a cohesive model of the hybrid library.

Operational issues associated with project deliverables

BUILDER has produced a number of pilot services and product demonstrators, many of which can be seen as services in their own right. Many of these pilot services use a number of key elements of the hybrid library within their own context, such as authentication, secure document delivery and links to proprietary databases.

IT infrastructure

The IT infrastructure that BUILDER has used to deliver these elements is key. Ian Upton, BUILDER Technical Development Officer, has noted that 'BUILDER is about infrastructure, not product' [4] in that the project has used Microsoft NT as a web application platform to develop a number of key elements which are transferable. The elements (such as authentication and secure document delivery) are not product-specific but can be applied to other products or indeed other contexts beyond the confines of the project.

The project runs Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and SiteServer. Active Server Pages (ASPs) are used in conjunction with a number of server side scripts and components. Some of these components were brought in as the project progressed. A good example of the transferability of the IT infrastructure to a number of different products within the project and outside of that context is SiteServer. This has been used to deliver a full text search engine for the project's electronic journal products, Midland History and Forensic Linguistics, and has also been used to deliver search engine products, including the Hybrid Library Projects Search Engine [5], demonstrating seamless, cross-searching of a number of separate web sites. SiteServer has also been investigated as a possible search engine solution for the university's web site which requires a branded corporate interface, range of functionality and the option for scoped searches of particular webs.

Some of the particular products to come out of the project are examples of the IT infrastructure in action.

Exam papers database

An exam papers database for the University of Birmingham has been developed which currently holds three years' worth of exam papers from all Schools in Adobe PDF, totalling some 4500 exam papers. Initial research focused on digitisation issues [6], such as selecting an appropriate electronic format, deciding on whether to undertake digitisation in-house within the university or out-source this activity to an external supplier, and developing a robust technical infrastructure. Considerable liaison and negotiation was undertaken with the Exams Office who administered the production and distribution of University exam papers.

When the first year's worth of exam papers was released in November 1998, access to the exam papers was restricted by IP address so that only computers connected to the campus network could gain access. Results from an evaluation of the pilot service undertaken in 1999 showed that students wanted more years of exam papers available electronically and they also wanted off-campus access so they could get hold of exam papers during, for example, holiday periods. Off-campus access was developed and implemented for the release of the 1998/99 exam papers in November 1999 so that students could log in using information on their University ID card. This is a good example of the iterative development undertaken by the project. A product is released and then evaluated after a set period and the results of this formal evaluation, as well as on-going customer feedback, are then fed into a further stage of development.

When research for developing this product was first undertaken back in May 1998 there were a number of unknowns. After careful investigation of the options Adobe PDF image files were selected as the electronic file format. The Exams Office did not want students to have a keyword search facility for the full-text of exam papers, which could have been provided if optical character recognition (OCR) had been applied to produce Adobe PDF image and hidden text files. It was decided that digitisation should be out-sourced to the Higher Education Digitisation Service. These have proven to be successful choices. Students are using the exam papers database very heavily with over 2,000 exam papers downloaded in one day in March 2000. The technical infrastructure has proven robust enough to sustain this level of demand and students have reported no problems in accessing files in Adobe PDF format. This pilot service has now been handed over to the Academic Office [7] and they continue to deliver this as a mainstream service now that the project has finished.

Electronic delivery of key course texts

BUILDER continued research into the electronic delivery of book chapters and journal articles to support learning. There had already been projects in eLib phases 1 and 2 that had developed pilot 'electronic short loan' (ESL) services delivering this type of material. BUILDER initially learnt from projects such as ACORN and ERIMS, but in May 1998 there was still a sense that the project was working in isolation. The main barrier to developing such a service was intellectual property rights and the reluctance of publishers to engage with the issue. BUILDER released a pilot electronic short loan service in January 1999 having approached over 20 publishers directly for copyright permissions and undertaking the digitisation of book chapters and journal articles in-house. Evaluation showed that students found the service useful but they wanted a critical mass of material available.

By June 1999, Higher Education Resources ON demand (HERON), another project in the eLib programme, was looking for test sites and BUILDER joined in the first wave in order to further develop its pilot electronic short loan (ESL) service. HERON aims to act as a clearing-house for the UK higher education community in terms of clearing copyright permissions and undertaking the digitisation of texts.

Undertaking both in-house copyright clearance and in-house digitisation worked out at approximately 3.5 hours per text for the complete process of obtaining the reading list from a member of academic staff through to making the electronic text live on the ESL. To undertake all activities in-house would take considerable staff resource so BUILDER looked to the service offered by HERON for a scaleable solution to take ESL services from project to mainstream service.

From September 1999 - 1 March 2000, 135 permissions were cleared by HERON . During this period, BUILDER submitted 298 texts to HERON. There was a 45% clearance success rate. The cost of using HERON to deliver 135 copyright cleared texts in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) was £11,000, at an average cost of £81 per text for one academic year's copyright permission for students on one specific course. Due to the high costs associated with delivering an ESL service, BUILDER concluded that such a service is most useful in delivering 'must read' texts. It is not economical to have background reading delivered via this method and accurate management information is need so that usage can be monitored and decisions made about whether it is economical to retain a particular text on ESL year on year.

Despite copyright clearance and digitisation being out-sourced to HERON, Information Services staff at an institutional level still need to invest significant time in obtaining correct bibliographic information for texts prior to informing HERON, and also integrating the electronic texts into an institutional web-based interface once the texts have been delivered. A team of staff has been set up to take the service into the mainstream, and initial outcomes already show that the introduction of ESL services involves the evaluation of existing work processes and the way that reading lists are handled.

Such a service may not be appropriate for the learning needs of some Schools. For example, the School of Medicine wanted chunks of information to be copyright cleared so that they could be integrated into internally produced curriculum materials. However, the School of Business found the electronic delivery of chapters and articles very useful to support the way they delivered modules.

API onto the library management system

An Application Programming Interface (API) has been created onto the Talis library management system (LMS). This has allowed a number of routines to be developed which can talk to and extract information from the LMS for use in web applications. These have been termed the 'Talis toolbox'. The LMS holds information about a major proportion of the user base of an institution. Likewise, the LMS is at the core of library activities as a major database holding records of printed materials and increasingly electronic materials.

BUILDER has exploited the API onto Talis to deliver a medium-term authentication solution for the exam paper database and electronic short loan service, tapping into the name, department and status fields within Talis. Demonstrators have been produced of pulling out information held within Talis to create new and exciting web products to deliver hybrid information services in a web environment, entirely separate from the web OPAC. For example, a reading list tool has been produced, which pulls out reading list information into a web environment and offers more information about specific texts on that reading list including whether it is on loan, its location and an indication of its popularity.

The demonstrators cited above use the 'read-tools' within the Talis toolbox. There have also been demonstrators of 'write-tools' where information is added to a free text string within the LMS. This free text string means that 'volatile' information can be added to the LMS and attached to the records of particular materials in the LMS. The metadata index was based on this tool. This allows Liaison Librarians to add information which has a limited time application to records within Talis. This information is held in a free text string (which can be easily changed or deleted from the LMS) and attached to the permanent record. This tool allows transitory information to be appended to records within the LMS. Such transitory information could be about access procedures for electronic databases, or about the applicability of a certain text or reference tool for a particular department or set of students. The crucial principle here is the LMS is at the centre of the hybrid library. There is the potential for a separate database to evolve alongside the LMS with details of transitory information such as authentication details and information landscaping information about the suitability of materials for certain groupings of students. However, the metadata index demonstrator developed by BUILDER retains the LMS at the centre of the hybrid library and aims to avoid the creation and maintenance of a separate database.

BUILDER has worked in liaison with Talis Information Ltd and although the Talis toolbox is not going to be turned into a commercial product, the project has influenced the thinking of the company and how it develops its LMS.

Induction packages

Given that authenticated access to the hybrid library means that customers can be identified either individually or as a group, then this provides the opportunity of presenting online induction and training packages at appropriate points. For example, a package focusing on how to find material on a reading list may be presented to first year students only. A package on using the exam papers database may be highlighted during the run in to critical periods prior to exams.

Seven induction packages have been developed, covering key aspects of the hybrid library. The packages are delivered using Macromedia Flash 4, which enables a more interactive environment to be presented, compared to flat web pages, enabling users to step back and forth within the package via the click of a mouse.

Originally it was envisaged that BUILDER would involve Liaison Librarians and together they would learn how to use Flash to develop the packages themselves. However, learning how to use Flash is time-consuming and BUILDER took the decision to out-source the design and rendering in Flash to a web design company. The content was planned internally and supplied in plain text for the web design company to develop. As with all out-sourcing exercises the relationship with the commercial company needs to be formally agreed with a clear understanding of what is expected, feedback mechanisms and deadlines. However, where the skills, equipment or time are not readily available from within the organisation, out-sourcing can be a viable option, as was the case with this particular part of BUILDER.

Thin client technology

The project has used thin client technology to demonstrate how CD-ROMs can be delivered seamlessly via a web browser. This technology enables remote access to applications running on a central server. A Citrix Winframe client server was installed which had a concurrent user license of 8-16 users. The combined cost of server, software and licenses was expensive, but it enabled a demonstration of the potential of this technology using a copyright free CD-ROM as a demonstrator on the BUILDER web site.

This technology has been expanded to support Atlas, the University of Birmingham's own 'home-grown' CD-ROM access system. In order to use Atlas a user needs to install a programme and log in to the Novell network on campus. The project established an API onto Atlas and access to the campus CD-ROM network via web browsers is now available to a limited number of Schools. The issues have been how to release the service without swamping it due to the limited number of concurrent user licenses for Citrix Winframe. The costs are high to buy more licenses and it is likely that this would be the access method of choice to the CD-ROM network.

Cross searching

Microsoft's SiteServer has been used to demonstrate the potential for producing a single catalogue of specified, but diverse web resources. Diverse in terms of document type in that formats including html, Word and PDF documents can be cross searched and also diverse in terms of location, with web sites from anywhere. The demonstrators outputted, including the Hybrid Library Projects Search Engine, show the potential for producing new products to support learning. Instead of cross searching the 5 UK hybrid library web sites, an Archaeology search engine could be produced, cross searching specific web sites defined by an academic member of staff or liaison librarian. This demonstrator highlights the potential use of such scoped search engines, but also highlights the need for a single catalogue of subject specific web resources with an API onto it, so that scoped searches can be produced from this catalogue, instead of crawling the Internet individually and impacting significantly on its speed.

Seamless searching of Alta Vista and Yahoo have also been demonstrated using a 'scrape' where a form enables the user to create a search query. This search term is then passed to a program that talks HTTP to both Alta Vista and Yahoo. web results pages are passed back to the program that scrapes away HTML formatting and extracts the first two results from each search engine. These results are repackaged as part of a BUILDER branded web page.

Electronic journals

Electronic versions of two journals have been developed: Midland History and Forensic Linguistics. The project has developed a transferable template for an electronic journal which both of these products use. The journal web template enables dynamic web pages with content generated from an Access database. The journal template also incorporates authentication, profiling, full text search facility of Adobe PDF image and hidden text documents, secure document delivery and administration of subscribers and journal content via a web interface.

The difference between the two journals has been the way the article content has been produced. For Midland History, a back run of journal issues from 1971-1999 was digitised and articles delivered as Adobe PDF. For Forensic Linguistics the issues of producing an online journal were investigated with the e-journal being incorporated into the business processes of the University of Birmingham Press, which publishes the print version of Forensic Linguistics. Back issues are available from June 1998 with articles delivered in Adobe PDF which have been outputted directly from the publishing process of the print journal in Adobe PageMaker.

Strategic themes

Information Services at the University of Birmingham has been keen to integrate the research and development from the BUILDER Project into mainstream service offerings. The wider issues of how to develop the pilots into full-scale services and how to integrate the model of the hybrid library into the Information Services web site were tackled in the second half of the project with discussions initiated at senior management level. The approach has been to spread, or 'cascade', the expertise and experience developed within the BUILDER Project team out to a much wider group of Information Services staff. A project management methodology has been established across Information Services, enabling a consistency of approach, and project teams have been established to take pilots into the mainstream.

Experience with the project's partners has proved invaluable in this context. For example, the university of Oxford has taken the exam paper database developed by BUILDER and applied it in their institutional setting to deliver a full-scale exam paper service [8]. Oxford not only used technology developed and implemented by BUILDER but also applied experience gained by the project in areas such as digitisation, out-sourcing and working with other functional units within the organisation. This enabled Oxford to move through the learning curve much more quickly and deliver a full-scale service within months.

A number of strategic issues are associated with scaling up the model of the hybrid library and integrating it into the mainstream and they are outlined as follows.

IT infrastructure

Being a converged service and serving a highly devolved university, this has meant that IS can only serve rather than lead. There has been a gap between the specific technology used by BUILDER, based on an NT platform, (and therefore the expertise that has developed around it) and the general level of expertise and infrastructure on campus.

The development time needed in taking the technical infrastructure developed at project level and converting it to deliver mainstream services cannot be underestimated. The pilot electronic short loan service (ESL) is a good example where a dedicated server has been identified as critical and 10 - 15 person days are required to develop the service for mainstream launch. There are issues of providing helpdesk or customer support to users. The demands on such frontline support inevitably increase with a launch into the mainstream and staff on these information points need to be trained and briefed about the issues associated with a new service. New, dedicated servers delivering 24/7 services need support themselves. There are service-level agreements in place with Schools and if a server goes down and the service is not available then contingencies need to be in place. Again, staff resource will need to be committed at an infrastructure support level to provide disaster-testing, back-up and extra servers may need to be purchased to provide redundancy for critical services should a server have a catastrophic failure (so that the service can be restored instantly).

Authentication

Authentication is key to a successful hybrid library and a robust and comprehensive authentication system needs to be in place. This authentication system requires comprehensive coverage of an institution's user base, covering both staff and students. As Neal McLean [9] has pointed out, this is essential for a one-stop shop approach and in streamlining access to different types of materials rather than demanding several different passwords.

BUILDER initially set out to use the campus Novell Directory Services (NDS) as the basis for authentication, developing a 'socket-based' interface that talks Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) to the NDS. BUILDER successfully developed a working test system but failed to make further progress due to security concerns, as LDAP is a very powerful protocol and enabling LDAP access to NDS without proper configuration and a decent firewall poses a serious security risk.

BUILDER looked to the Talis library management system (LMS) to provide authentication services. Again a socket-based interface was developed. Passing a name and 'barcode' as supplied on the university ID card results in a 'user unknown' or a 'user known' response. The system also provides basic information about the user including a properly formatted version of their name, their status (staff, student etc.) and their department.

Within the project context, authentication based on the Talis LMS has worked very well, delivering off-campus access to the Exam Papers Database on a University-wide basis. This system has also enabled profiling information to be stored and retrieved so that information landscapes of resources appropriate to particular user groupings can be presented. However, the use of the Talis LMS as the basis for delivering authentication and profiling services in wider areas is unsustainable due to the unknown impact on the LMS and its performance. NDS is the scaleable solution.

Metadata management

BUILDER has located the library management system (LMS) and catalogue at the heart of the hybrid library as this is the key database for library activities and the creation of a separate database(s) would lead to duplication and wasted effort. The 'Talis toolbox' has provided a demonstration of how information from the LMS can be used and displayed within web applications and how additional information can be added to the LMS and attached to item records without a separate database being created.

These 'read' and 'write' tools for the LMS are integral to the hybrid library demonstrator developed by BUILDER and highlight the need for additional functionality to be developed across library management systems in order to cope with the changing role of the library catalogue and an increasingly dynamic, as well as static, repository for information. An example of this dynamic role is the metadata index. Here, information is added by Liaison Librarians about the suitability of materials for certain user groupings, along with access details. This information is essential to provide information landscapes of relevant resources based on users' needs, but will often be short-term and not permanent. This 'volatile' information is attached to records within the LMS, avoiding the creation of a separate database. Involving Liaison Librarians with the skills to enhance the data as part of their daily work was crucial.

Using the 'Talis toolbox' is not a scaleable solution. However, BUILDER has been able to demonstrate a need which has influenced the library system supplier, Talis, in the direction of its development. Additional information is needed to link authenticated users or groups of users with information resources relevant to them. BUILDER has tried to add this information to the LMS but to make this a scaleable option would take a decision by the library system suppliers. Other 'gateway' libraries and library portal applications use a separate database as with the MyLibrary model developed by Eric Lease Morgan [10].

Digital materials management

Copyright and licensing issues remain fundamental to the creation and exploitation of digital materials in a learning and research context. During the project's lifetime these issues have moved forward with the establishment of the UK's Higher Education Digitisation Agreement [11].

BUILDER has had experience of both negotiating with publishers directly for copyright clearance and of using the services of a broker, in the case of Higher Education Resources ON-demand (HERON), which has acted as the intermediary with publishers and also digitised materials. The establishment of HERON as the broker for the clearance and digitisation of book chapters and journal articles for UK higher education has been a positive step. HERON can represent the collective voice of HE in negotiations with publishers so there is a strong advocacy role, as well as providing economies of scale in terms of processing clearances and digitising texts.

Copyright and digitisation are at the heart of digital materials management and out-sourcing this to a broker / commercial intermediary can take pressure away from an institution constrained by staff resources (although such broker services have to be paid for). However, managing digital materials still involves considerable commitment of resources within the hybrid library in terms of quality assuring the digital materials, storing them so they can be easily identified and retrieved, creating links to a delivery system and creating archival back-ups.

The recent emphasis on managed learning environments and the creation of online courses by academic staff will continue to highlight issues of copyright and intellectual property in the digital environment. Academic staff want to integrate 'chunks' of information into their own curriculum materials but the process of copyright clearance and payment will need to be undertaken. The time-consuming nature of this task will put pressure on institutional resources unless a mandate for education can be negotiated.

Staff development

One of the key issues during the project was having staff with the right skills at the right time. Often technical staff beyond the project team could not spare the time to devote to developing specific aspects of the project. As the project was built on a specific NT platform then there was a need to raise awareness of these technologies across IS.

Planning the integration of new hybrid library services into the mainstream has prompted a review of existing work processes and the way that staff are structured to handle this new service environment. Training issues in new software packages and new procedures is inevitable here, but more fundamentally there is the need to set the concept of the hybrid library in context, about what it is and what it aims to achieve as many front-line staff have felt at a distance from the developing model of the hybrid library. An evaluation of the impact of the project showed that IS staff had absorbed the BUILDER products into their 'working culture' and were more articulate about electronic information services and developments [12]. The impact on traditional cataloguing roles was greatest, with staff sensing a need to change functions and re-train. Staff in Public Services could also see their role shifting in a hybrid environment.

Academic liaison

Inevitably some academic staff are more enthusiastic than others about the hybrid library and its potential to support student learning. However, it is important to get as many onboard as possible. One issue that the University of Birmingham is having to face is changing its culture to take on board developments in learning and teaching. Birmingham has traditionally been a research-led university and it does not have a good store of staff that appreciate the need for learning and teaching developments or have an understanding of the technology. The project found that academic staff were more likely to engage when there were services to show such as the exam papers database or electronic short loan. BUILDER has been instrumental in implementing electronic document delivery so that it has become embedded within the culture of the university. Electronic delivery of exam papers is now administered by the academic office, and schools are now readily accepting that teaching and learning materials can, and should, be delivered over the web.

Managing change

Information services at the University of Birmingham, as a converged service, is structured into divisions largely based on traditional, functional areas (such as collection management and public services), although the learning and research support division goes beyond functional boundaries. Integrating hybrid library services into Information Services has highlighted the increasing need for cross-divisional working with staff drawn from across Information Services coming together to form project teams with shared aims and objectives and a specific task. The project has pinpointed the way in which research projects can cross-over into mainstream services quite quickly if the right kind of staff are involved and the end product is right.

The project also had a remit to affect cultural change within higher education and to promote the concept of the hybrid library widely. Following interviews with senior administrators at the university in 1998 and 2000 there was a sense that the underlying technological applications that had been developed provided a 'platform to build upon'. One senior administrator commented:

'The key thing that BUILDER has shown is that these things are possible, that you can set up sensible relationships between web-based information and people.' [13]

However, the project has not operated in a vacuum. BUILDER has, in turn, been influenced by developments at institutional level and in the wider UK higher education environment during the three-year duration of the project from 1998 - 2000.

External factors

During the lifetime of BUILDER, the web as a 'change driver' has moved centre-stage at institutional level with the focus on delivering a web-enabled campus. Managed learning environments have emerged as key elements in institutions' teaching and learning strategies and international collaborative ventures are being explored to create and commercially exploit online courses and curriculum content. Complimentary national initiatives in the UK have also developed during the course of the project, with the instigation of the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) and the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER).

Portals and the web-enabled campus

The BUILDER Project coincided with the University of Birmingham's realisation that it needed to adopt a web-enabled campus. Much of the technology coming out of BUILDER has been relevant here. Often it has been BUILDER staff who have the best grasp of what is required and some staff will move across to the university's Internet Action Plan [14] Team. This is because the technologies and issues being addressed in the hybrid library environment have broader applications. In fact, the issues facing the development of the hybrid library are issues facing the university as a whole (for example, authenticated, profiled access to an institution's web site). The key elements of personalised or customised views of the library and information environment are now being applied to institutions as a whole. A number of Australian universities are advanced in this area, such as the My.Monash portal at Monash University and the university of Sydney's web portal system [15], which give both staff and students a customisable view of their interactions with the university from a web interface.

Pollock and Cornford [16] have noted that the move towards 'virtual universities' and the increased interaction with students via the web has fundamental implications for the structures and ways of working within a higher education institution. BUILDER's experience in developing a model of the hybrid library and then addressing the issues of changing the way that Information Services works and the processes that staff are engaged in has been a very useful learning experience for the institution. Staff within Information Services have been in a good position to see the impact of web technologies in bringing formerly separate functional units, or 'silos', together across the institution and this has meant that Information Services has been able to influence strategic direction within the institution.

Managed learning environments

The impact of electronic methods of learning and teaching have become an increasing strategic priority for the University of Birmingham in the last two years with the submission of an institutional Learning and Teaching Strategy to the UK's Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). A Learning Development Unit has been set up to assist academics in the change to new learning and teaching methods and to create a pool of expertise that is not just focused on educational technology but also has pedagogic input as well.

The two key lessons to come out of the BUILDER Project which have helped to prepare the way for the integration of managed learning environments (MLEs) into the institution are the need for collaboration and project teams across previously separate functional units at institutional level, and also the efficiency saving in tapping into pre-existing databases and legacy systems to draw out information for use in completely new web applications, such as portals. Jonathan Foster has noted that 'the development of virtual education is an intrinsically collaborative problem' [17] and perhaps the two key words in any new web-enabled campus are integration and collaboration. Information Services at the University of Birmingham has strong links with the Staff Development Unit. The Learning Development Unit itself is line-managed by Information Services which is important in terms of IT support for the new initiatives and to make sure there is no duplication of effort amongst the two services. The hybrid library and managed learning environments have a place within institutional portals and all of these virtual spaces need to integrate closely with administrative systems and a number of other legacy systems and databases such as those in housing services or the careers service.

Globalisation

The globalisation of higher education means that anything which facilitates the delivery of learning materials to distance learners is to be encouraged. Different institutions will be delivering different bits of content pulled together by global collaboration and e-companies. E-companies are going to pull in all sorts of commercial operations, publishers, HE institutions, learned societies, software companies. Underpinning this must be the adoption of generic managed learning environments (MLEs) and learning and teaching techniques (whether IT or not) developed by IT experts in conjunction with academics. There is a potentially large market in the developing world where there is a growing middle-class looking to gain qualifications but this is going to be very competitive, and not all universities are going to be able to move into this area. At the University of Birmingham there is a strong move towards the E-university with initial investigations into establishing an E-learning company. This vision will partly be realised through global collaboration via the Universitas 21 [18] grouping and through the UK government's move toward developing an E-university [19].

Conclusion

The focus on the web for re-engineering the way that universities work through student portals and managed learning environments has increased. BUILDER has found that the technologies and issues being addressed in the hybrid library environment have broader applications. Many issues facing the development of the hybrid library are issues facing the university as a whole and not just the library or information service. Technologies and ways of thinking that have been developed in a hybrid library project such as BUILDER are being applied in areas beyond the library, as the web is moving to the centre of university activities.

References

[1] AGORA: based on library management system [URL http://hosted.ukoln.ac.uk/agora] ; BUILDER: an institutional focus [URL http://builder.bham.ac.uk] ; HEADLINE: developing learning landscapes [URL http://www.headline.ac.uk ; HYLIFE: investigating needs of a range of customer types [URL http://hylife.unn.ac.uk] ; MALIBU: management implications with focus on the humanities area [URL http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/malibu].

[2] Details of the UK's Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib) is available at:

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib

[3] Dowler, Lawrence (ed.). Gateways to Knowledge: The Role of Academic Libraries in Teaching, Learning and Research. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997.

[4] Upton, Ian. 'BUILDER - The DIY Guide'. New Review of Academic Librarianship, 1999, 5, pp.41-59.

[5] Upton, Ian. 'BUILDER: the Hybrid Library Projects Search Engine'. Exploit Interactive, Issue 3, 25 October 1999. Available at: http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue3/builder

[6] Hampson, Andrew; Pinfield, Stephen and Upton, Ian. 'Digitisation of Exam Papers'. The Electronic Library, August 1999, 17 (4), pp.239-246.

[7] A paper highlighting the scaling issues in moving the pilot exam paper database service from Project level to a mainstream University of Birmingham service administered by the Academic Office is available at: http://builder.bham.ac.uk/documentation/scaling/html/scaling.asp

[8] Oxford Examination Papers Online is available at http://oxam.ox.ac.uk

[9] McLean, Neil. 'Matching people and information resources: authentication, authorization and access management and experience at Macquarie University Sydney'. Program, July 2000, 34(3), pp. 239-255.

[10] Morgan, Eric Lease. 'Personalized Library Interfaces'. Exploit Interactive, Issue 6, 26 June 2000. Available at: http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue6/libraries

[11] Information on the UK HE Digitisation Agreement is available on the UK's Copyright Licensing Agency web site at: http://www.cla.co.uk/www/digital.htm

[12] Dalton, Pete and Stella Thebridge. 'An Evaluation of the Impact of the BUILDER Hybrid Library Project'. October 2000. Available at: http://builder.bham.ac.uk/publicationsandpresentationsreports.asp

[13] Ibid., p. 43.

[14] Lipman Hearne Inc. University of Birmingham Internet Action Plan. May 1999.

[15] Maslen, Geoff. 'Net portals are wizards of Oz'. Times Higher Education Supplement. Number 1449, 18 August 2000.

[16] Pollock, Neil and James Cornford. 'Theory and Practice of the Virtual University'. Ariadne, Issue 24, 21 June 2000. Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue24/virtual-universities/intro.html

[17] Foster, Jonathan. 'Virtual universities - institutional issues for information professionals'. Ariadne, Issue 25, 24 September 2000. Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue25/foster/intro.html

[18] Universitas 21 is a company incorporated in the United Kingdom with a network of 18 universities in 10 countries. The Company's core business is provision of a pre-eminent brand for educational services supported by a strong quality assurance framework. Available at: http://www.universitas.edu.acu

[19] 'e-University' is the working title of a collaborative project by the UK higher education funding bodies to establish a new way of providing HE programmes through web-based learning. Available at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/partners/euniv/default.asp