UNIVERSITIES ADOPT BDS ALL

The BDS Academic Library Licence (ALL) is now in use the length of Great Britain. Recent adopters include Falmouth University in south west England, Swansea University in Wales and Edinburgh University in Scotland. In the North, Leeds University has also signed up.

“Four more universities adopting ALL is great news for BDS,” says Heather Sherman, Director of Academic Library Operations. “It is even better news for university libraries across the British Isles as the growing user base means ALL is a mature product with a proven track record that can adapt and respond to new adopters’ requirements with ease. There couldn’t be a better time to sign up for the ALL.”

Vote of Confidence

Prestigious universities, including those with highly regarded library schools such as The University of Sheffield and Aberystwyth University, have now been using the ALL for nearly a year while early adopters Imperial College London remain whole-hearted supporters of the principles behind the ALL.

“The variety of universities now using the ALL for obtaining catalogue records for their collections is remarkable,” continues Heather. “Arts institutions, STEM universities, humanities, research… the ALL is meeting requirements successfully.”

New adopter, Swansea University Libraries and Archives, provides high-quality information services for all students and staff, as well as the public. Its Singleton Campus Library serves the Colleges of Arts and Humanities, Science, Medicine, Law, and Human and Health Sciences. The new Bay Campus Library serves the needs of the College of Engineering, School of Management, Computer Science and Mathematics.

“The BDS ALL enables us to automate metadata improvement for new book purchases and work to upgrade our current book records,” says Andrew Brown, Collections Services and Systems Librarian at Swansea. “Fewer touches save valuable staff cataloguing time which we can use for original cataloguing of older material and special collections.”

A Mature Product

Edinburgh University Library is the first institution to adopt the ALL in Scotland. Since the bequest of Clement Litill’s Library in 1580 and the opening of the university’s doors in 1583, Edinburgh has grown into one of the world’s most prestigious universities and includes the likes of philosopher, David Hume and the “father of modern geology” James Hutton among the figures that have graced its library.

Creatively vibrant Falmouth University extends the ALL’s reach to the far southwest of England. It has libraries on its two campuses situated four miles apart. These provide digital resources, magazines, specialist material and journals, titles on DVD, Blu-Ray or to stream; image banks; news archives; business and creative databases; ebooks and e-journals.

“When you first create a new product you hope that your customers will find it of use. Then you hope to see its beneficial effect in the real world,” says Lesley Whyte, Managing Director of BDS. “It is very encouraging to see that, after so much investment and development work, the BDS ALL is proving so valuable to universities up and down the country.”

Find out more about BDS metadata for academic libraries at: www.bdslive.com/libraries/academic-libraries/ or contact Heather Sherman on heather.sherman@bdslive.com, 07711 378 086. More information on new ALL adopters can be found at: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/ https://library.leeds.ac.uk/