Appendix 4

Main components of an Online Library Information Service

 Introduction 

The ideas in this appendix are taken from a proposal developed by the Adamastor Trust on establishing online information services. The ideas below constitute one example of how electronic information bases can inform the transformation of higher education in South Africa.

 What information services are required? 

Currently, there are five main categories of potential beneficiaries of online library information services: students of the Admastor’s partner institutions; academic staff members; library staff members; administrative staff members; and external users (such as researchers or commercial organizations). These groups of people require many overlapping information services, some of which are listed below: 

1.      Access to ‘secondary source’ databases, that is databases containing information about resources that people might want to use, their contents, and their physical location. This would include databases such as library Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs) and specialist databases such as Medline. Crucially, users accessing secondary source databases will increasingly demand seamless interlinking between different sources of data. For example, users might want to begin specific searches in a system such as Medline – which stores abstracts and detailed content information about medical resources – and then move seamlessly into an OPAC to determine a specific resource’s physical location and to reserve it for future use. Such services would be required both for educational and research purposes. External users might also be willing to pay for the right to use such services. Value could be added to the service in the latter case by running proxy searches on behalf of external users, for an additional fee. Secondary source databases could also have additional administrative functionality designed into them. For example, it would be very useful to build in report modules that allow for easy extraction of data required for SAPSE purposes or to compile usage statistics (the latter would also be useful for all of the services described below). 

2.      Access to ‘primary source’ databases, that is databases that store information about resources, as well as direct, online access to the resources themselves. As increasing volumes of information are digitized, more databases can store the actual resources for which users are looking, as well as searchable information about those resources. The possibilities of creating seamless electronic hyperlinks to resources anywhere in the world – via the Internet and other computer networks – also start to blur distinctions between primary and secondary source databases. Thus, in many cases, users will want to gain direct access to the resources themselves (on web servers, CD-ROM servers, video servers, and other storage devices) when they access databases. In some instances, this is becoming a crucial requirement of educational processes themselves. For example, lawyers who are not taught, during their degree programmes, how to engage with primary source databases that store legislation, statutes, and South African case histories are placed at an educational disadvantage when they enter the workplace. 

3.      Information support services. A requirement for many users is support in using various information services, whether these be primary and secondary source databases, library systems, or the resources themselves. Such services currently most often require direct interaction with the people who offer these support services, but there is a strong case to be made for providing online support services to help users. This would include the development of: intuitive search facilities that are easy to use, but accommodate various levels of complexity in searching; guides on information sources and how to find and store information; electronic library guides; guides to using, accessing, and evaluating resources; support guides on writing assignments or reports; and online examples of interactive learning methods and approaches. 

4.      Online course materials and information about courses and programmes. The blurring of distinctions between primary and secondary source databases creates interesting possibilities for extending various of the above services to support educational processes more directly. Growing numbers of academic staff are using ICTs to develop and/or deliver course materials to students, as well as to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous communication with and amongst students. This raises exciting possibilities for building primary source databases to facilitate the storage of course- and programme-specific information, which could then be used in various ways. At the most obvious level, enrolled students could access online resources, as part of their educational experience. Potential students could access course databases to read preliminary information about courses and programmes, to help them choose from various enrolment options. Library staff members could access consolidated reports of, for example, reading lists, to help them plan resource acquisition and usage more effectively. Administrators could also generate reports automatically to fulfil certain bureaucratic requirements, such as submission of programme-specific information to the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA).   

5.      Personalized user interfaces. All of the above suggests that there is likely to be growing demand for   personalized interfaces with the various services on offer, particularly as the number and complexity of these services expands. This likelihood is confirmed when one reflects on the different needs of potential groups of users, and the different needs of people within those groups. Fortunately, this is becoming technically easier to support by developing user profiles that can be stored in databases and generated in HTML format to create personalized home pages for all users. User profiles can be generated from various sources – such as selection of options by users or from student record-keeping systems which indicate courses on which students are enrolled – and could be updated continuously as these sources are modified. They could contain information about subject preferences, courses being studied or taught, favourite links (for regular caching of web pages), and a host of other preferences. As well as generating personalized user interfaces, this information could then be used to ‘push’ information to users, for example news about discussion lists worth joining or new online resources, assignment reminders, and research opportunities or requests for collaboration on research projects.