Co-East Projects: Co-East Plus

Partners

Co-East

Co-East emerged as a body following funding from DCMS / Wolfson funding in 1999/2000. The funding enabled six public library authorities within the East of England region to explore how library and information resources, such as library catalogues and community information databases, could be made available to the public on a regional basis through exploiting cutting edge ICT developments. At the end of the funded phase in March 2000, Co-East continued to operate on a Consortium basis to pursue both the technical solutions required to continue to share resources regionally and also to position itself in the long-term as a body, working across the East of England, to deliver, at an operational level, a fully fledged resource discovery and access sharing system.

ELISA (East of England Library and Information Services Development Agency)

ELISA is a cross-sectoral regional agency, which works at a strategic level to represent the library sector and pursue library developments in the East of England. Its board has good representation from both the HE and public library sector, with the Chair and the Honorary Treasurer both coming from the HE sector. All but one of the universities in the region has subscribed to ELISA. The membership includes public libraries, health, government libraries, business services and further education libraries. ELISA is not intending to develop an operational arm, but it will work on behalf of its members to develop new services, cluster development, the sharing of good practice, and broker new partnerships and alliances between library and information services, within the region, and beyond.

Co-East and ELISA acknowledge the need for strategic work in building cross-domain partnerships, which have a demonstrable output for users in all sectors. The bid is submitted following an expressed expectation from the higher education sector within this region to extend the Co-East platform into other library and information sectors.

British Library

The British Library has indicated that it is willing to support this bid . Its involvement would be in working with Co-East Plus to facilitate new ways of accessing BL content, both priced and unpriced, through the Co-East Plus Internet Gateway. Initially this work would start with the BL's Inside service but would potentially cover a wide variety of BL content.

Open University

The Open University has also signalled its commitment to Co-East Plus. The OU brings particular expertise to this project, particularly in reaching traditionally hard-to-reach users, for example those in rural areas. The OU is also willing to bring particular expertise in relation to training for library staff in information retrieval skills to this project. It has recently implemented the Voyager library management system which is Z39.50 compliant and the supplier, Endeavor Information Systems Inc., is working an ISO/ILL compliant inter-library loans module to be delivered later this year. The Library wishes to develop partnerships with public libraries and collaboration in the East of England region, where the OU is represented in Cambridge by the "OU in the East of England" centre, particularly in relation to access arrangements for students based in the region.

Library System Suppliers

Integral to the success of the Co-East project has been the co-operative nature in which library system suppliers have worked together to achieve interoperability between diverse library management systems. As a result, Co-East Plus will have a firm foundation from the outset, which will undoubtedly ensure that the time available to achieve our outcomes is maximised. Companies involved with the original Co-East project were DS Ltd, epixtech, Fretwell Downing and Geac . Fretwell Downing will be the main technical partner in this project . An important part of Co-East Plus will be exploring the potential for interoperability with other technical partners.

The Health Sector

Some health sector libraries within the East of England are members of ELISA. In securing their support, this bid offers real opportunities to explore access to the resources of this sector. The physical availability of material within the health sector is not standardised - whilst some libraries have a Z39.50 compliant catalogue, others do not. Co-East Plus will enable us to work with colleagues in the health sector to establish how far interoperability can be achieved. It also offers a tremendous opportunity to benefit from the developing initiatives within the health sector .

University of East Anglia: Agora

The UEA has signalled its commitment to the Co-East Plus proposal and brings particular expertise to this project, particularly from its work as lead site for the Agora Hybrid Library Project, which was part of the JISC funded e-Lib3 programme. UEA have developed an on-going partnership with Fretwell Downing from this work, and their expertise in interoperability issues and technical and user specifications work will be relevant to Co-East Plus.

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