IT Project Implementation

A case study in IT project implementation at the British Library

The challenge for the new, totally automated British Library was obtaining the appropriate project-management skills to ensure that an IT project of this scale was achieved successfully.

Not only are these skills difficult to define in terms of a job description but they are increasingly difficult to find in the IT market.

The criteria were clear: the ability to identify appropriate technology and to access the skilled resource needed to develop and install it.

Add to this an ability to handle a large project and to influence at the highest level within the organisation and the description is almost complete. The ideal candidate would also bring hands-on experience of automated libraries.

Impact Executives placed Eric Mason, a senior interim who had just completed an 18-month spell at the London Borough of Lambeth where he managed a major library, archive and reference system project.

Eric was an integral part of the project team handling three key areas of automation for the library:

    * The Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC), which holds over 12 million records
    * The Automated Book Request System, which verifies availability of the publication, prints the request in the storage area and tracks and communicates progress
    * The Mechanical Bookhandling System, which routes the container to the correct collection point

With the new systems in place, the British Library expects the majority of material to be identified and delivered to readers within 30 minutes of the order, which is a considerable improvement on the manual system.

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