Draft:South East Library Management System
South England library system
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The South East Library Management System (SELMS) is a multi authority library consortium in the South East of England, UK, which allows for the interoperability of their services, catalogues, and library cards.[1][2] The consortium serves over 600,000 users per year, handling upwards of 18 million items in the same period.[3][4]
Submission declined on 23 September 2023 by Stuartyeates (talk).
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Submission declined on 6 October 2022 by Extraordinary Writ (talk). This draft's references do not show that the subject meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion. The draft requires multiple published secondary sources that:
Declined by Extraordinary Writ 3 years ago.
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Comment: Most of these are primary sources. Stuartyeates (talk) 04:57, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
SELMS operates in 14 local authorities throughout the South East of England[3], albeit with the notable exception of many parts of London, though the London Borough of Camden and Southwark are included in the scheme. The consortium has used the Spydus Library Management System operated by Civica since its inception.[1][5]
It is Europe's largest library consortium.[6] Sonce the Covid-19 pandemic the consortium has seen a 90-95% return in footfall.[7]
Coverage
Starting with an initial 6 library authorities linking together in 2005[8][9] the SELMS consortium now covers 14 authorities. These are counties, unitary authorities, and other bodies that manage libraries on a city or county level, these are:
- Brighton and Hove
- Buckinghamshire
- Camden
- Hertfordshire
- Kent[10]
- Medway
- Milton Keynes
- Reading
- Richmond
- Slough
- Southend-on-Sea
- Southwark
- West Berkshire
- Windsor and Maidenhead[3][2]
These authorities are referred to internally as 'library authority partners'[3], and together they form a network of almost 300 library branches across the combined coverage area, with access to over 6 million items.[3] [9] Therefore the SELMS network claims to cover about 10% of the UK population.[11]
Within this network, a service user can use their library card from any one of the library authority partners in the jurisdiction of any of the other partners, and be able to borrow books the same as if they were registered with that library directly as user data is shared across authorities.[12][13]
SELMS have a contract with BDS (Bibliographic Data Services) for catalogue record metadata and book cover images for their discovery layer.[6]
Service fees
Service users can opt to reserve books for collection at a local library from any library in the SELMS network[14], but this can sometimes incur fees. For example, Brighton and Hove libraries charge £3 to reserve a book through SELMS[15], while charging £1 to reserve a book from their branches only.[16] Similarly, Buckinghamshire libraries charge £3 to reserve a book through SELMS, whilst costing only 60p (£0.60) to reserve a book within the authority[17]. Southend Libraries charged this same £3 for reserving a book through SELMS when they joined the consortium, which faced criticism from service users[18], though they now charge £4[19].
Service fees are not incurred for returning books to a library in the SELMS network, though books being returned late will incur the standard fee for the authority the book is being returned to.[citation needed]
Staff
As of 1 November 2011, SELMS itself only employs two full-time staff members; Hilary Ballard and Donna Henderson.[1]
There is a lack of data regarding how many people are employed across libraries in the SELMS partners, as generally these staff are employed by the town council rather than the library itself.[citation needed]
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