JISC Collections has announced a new shared service that aims to help UK libraries manage their e-resources more efficiently. Called Knowledge Base+, the service is being established to start addressing the challenges facing libraries due to the inadequate data and metadata about publications, packages, subscriptions, entitlements and licences that is available throughout the e-resource supply chain.
The result is that libraries are spending too much time correcting and maintaining basic e-resource information and not enough time is left to undertake the sort of decision making that they would like to be conducting to improve services for users.
JISC Collections has been leading this work on behalf of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and JISC, drawing on its own knowledge and experience and the work of SCONUL and JISC to identify the shared e-resource management needs of UK academic institutions.
In addition to saving time and cost, KB+ will also provide benefits including improving the reliability of the e-library - making better quality and more accurate information available to the services that libraries use will improve the quality of service that libraries provide to their end users. Ensuring the value of vendor knowledge bases that drive library systems, by improving the supply and quality of data that goes into vendor knowledge bases, libraries will benefit from an improved return on the investment they make in those systems. By providing one central source of institutional data that is shared across all stakeholders as required, the service seeks to put institutions in control of their data across systems and services.
