31 January 2024
In 2023 UKSG launched its Innovation Awards, offering financial support to professionals and organisations seeking to develop new ideas and proposals for the wider benefit of the information community. Higher Education Library Technology (HELibTech) made a successful bid and is using the £3,900 award to assist with a major transformation project to improve the way HELibTech supports the UKSG and Higher Education library community.
HELibTech (https://helibtech.com/ ) is a community resource that was developed by UKSG member Ken Chad Consulting in 2009 to extend the work of a 2008 JISC / SCONUL project that evaluated the library systems landscape in UK HE. Since then HELibTech has expanded to cover many more aspects of library technology and provides a rich, open data listing of UK HE institutions with the specific library technology solutions they deploy. It has become the go to place for those looking for a starting point into the world of library technology.
Over the next 12 months the UKSG award will help support two part time Community Editors improve the site: Dave Rowe, an experienced software developer and creator of the award winning Libraries Hacked site, and Paul Verlander an experienced professional librarian with a long track record of developing and managing library systems, content and collections from both HE and research libraries.
They will review and improve content and the technology platform with the aim of improving the user experience and introducing a range of new features. Content on the site will remain free to use and re-use under the most liberal (CC0) Creative Commons Licence.