All roads lead to Rome : a library information management system grows wings

The major investment for any library and hence its parent organization is its information management system (LIMS). Combine this with the expertise that library staff have, especially in the area of metadata creation and storage (aka. cataloguing) and asset management and control (aka. circulation), libraries are in an excellent position to assist in describing, managing, providing access to and exchanging data about an organisation’s non-library assets and resources, both tangible and intangible. CQU Library is strongly committed to minimizing data keying / rekeying and the number of parallel systems it runs. This is achieved through the capture, creation and storage of metadata in only one location (namely the LIMS database) and then displaying and reusing this metadata in a variety of permutations, with the use of web-based technologies and simple data exchange protocols. While managing its own resources this way now for a number of years eg. Course Resources Online and Historical Coastlines Images Archives, the Library is now working with the wider University community to capture the information about, share and re-use the source metadata and make more accessible non-library resources such as the University’s intellectual property / research output, its art collection and videostreams. This paper will fully explore the rationale behind this approach and showcase some of the ways it has been implemented.