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SELF - The Provision of Self-Service Facilities for Library Users

EC DGXIII Project - Telematics for Libraries

NOTE: This project was completed while the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM) was based at the University of Central Lancashire during 1993-98. On 1 April 1998, CERLIM moved to a new base at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The enormous pressures on libraries of all types, arising from a combination of heavy demand and limited resources, have meant that there is great interest in a shift towards the concepts of self-service for users. Not only is open access stock becoming the norm, but a move towards self issue, self return, and self guiding is becoming apparent. In many ways this shift parallels that in the retail sector where supermarkets have moved from providing individual service to customers, to checkouts with bar code and other technologies and now into self service purchasing with technology providing the necessary security checks.

The development of IT systems based on client server architectures opens up possibilities for much wider use of self-service facilities as the range of products and services networked in the library/user environment expands.

A number of library system suppliers are now offering self-service issue systems, but there is as yet little take up. Early systems did not incorporate security system clearance procedures as an automatic process and thus could be as labour intensive in security checking as in the staffed issue process. Additionally, the client-server model has yet to be properly utilised.

The SELF project, which was funded by the European Commission, was designed to:

1. provide a case study of the implementation of self-service issue in a major library;
2. examine the scope for the development of other self-service functions;
3. examine the technological basis of current self-service functions, with particular reference to client-server;
4. implementations and the application of international standards;
5. examine the relevance of supporting technologies, such as smartcards;
6. deliver a generalised self-service systems functional specification.

The project was carried out by a consortium consisting of the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM) at the University of Central Lancashire (UK), Dynix Ltd (Ireland), and the National Library for Psychology and Education (Sweden). The project ran from February 1995 to March 1996, with an international seminar taking place on 29 January 1996 in Stockholm.

For further information on the Project, please contact:

Professor Peter Brophy
Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM)
Manchester Metropolitan University
Department of Information and Communications
Geoffrey Manton Building
Rosamond Street West
Manchester
M15 6LL

Tel: +44 (0)161 247 6142
Fax:+44 (0)161 247 6979
p.brophy@mmu.ac.uk
cerlim@mmu.ac.uk