Auckland Libraries' new collections management system.

Wednesday November 20, 2019 12:00pm - 12:25pm

Angus - Breakout Room Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

On 6 December 2012, the Auckland Council approved the strategy document for Auckland Libraries. This document laid out a 10-year strategy for Auckland Libraries. It declared that while physical libraries will continue to be important, the digital library will see the most significant growth and change, putting the library “in every pocket” by 2023. Are we there yet? Following the creation of the ‘super-city’ of Auckland, seven public library systems within the region were combined to form Auckland Libraries - with 55 branches and four regional research centres, each with significant archival collections, each using different collection management systems. Post-amalgamation, Auckland Libraries had hundreds of databases in the digital library, over 70 of which were created in-house. The challenge: merge all the regional archival collections into one unified collection - with a single collection management system. And combine this with all of the in-house research databases to create a single search across all of the Auckland Libraries heritage resources. The result: Kura Heritage Collections Online https://kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/digital/ How did we get there and what did we learn along the way? The first phase was discovery: how many databases are there, with how many records? How much use are they getting, how much is obsolete, superseded by content already available online? One major discovery – Auckland Libraries’ created content was getting way more use than the subscription databases. Our unique content is what is most valuable to our customers. The next phase was to design a process to select a new content management system and publishing platform for all of this unique content. Kura Heritage Collections Online was not to be an aggregator – pulling together the results from four separate regional heritage collections, and a diverse range of research databases, but single-search across a single, unified collection. We used a collaborative process to select the collections management software, one that included all the stakeholders. Teams that ordinarily had ownership of only one step in the workflow, and tended to work in isolation, were invited to consider the whole. This process led to a major shift in the way we work. This presentation is a progress report on how Auckland Libraries has been working towards achieving the goal of putting the Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections “in every pocket” by 2023.

Timothy Barnett, Auckland Libraries