The Future of On-Line Browsing

There must be a better way for us to show off the collections in the OPAC, especially for the person at home that we are looking to deliver items to in the future. I had a really "thats it" moment when I saw zoomii.com.

Built to interface with Amazon books, zoomii shows you virtual bookshelves to browse online, just like you would in a bookshop or library. It just seemed right to me. You can interact with the "books" by zooming in & out in a way that feels natural.

If you look at the site, and I recommend you do, you can watch a video about zoomii. Then just imagine LibraryThing and zoomii-type browsing together in our OPAC.

eLGAR Strategy - progressing the next steps

Remember the eLGAR Customer Strategy published in November 2007? It was adopted by the Board as the eLGAR Strategy in recognition of the commitment made to benchmark all streams of work undertaken by libraries against a customer-centric strategy.

Since November the eLGAR Strategy has been progressed in a series of sessions by the Board, eLLF (the Library Leadership teams) and the original Customer Strategy Project Team examining current local and regional projects and where they align with objectives set out in three time strategic horizons.

Horizon 1: 18 months - Understanding the customer and removing barriers

Horizon 2: 36 months - Building capability

Horizon 3: 48 months - Extending the reach

Idenitifcation and gap analysis is currently underway. Determining alignment to the first objective of the Strategy will be on the agenda for group work at the next eLLF workshop in July. This objective is: "to define and measure the best eLGAR experience and how we are delivering on it". The process of defining the Customer Experience in terms of pivotal touchpoints with the library service was the subject of a workshop held on 29th May.