Customer Partners

Bolton MBC is one of the country's leaders in implementation of e-government. The Council is a pathfinder authority for the implementation of Smartcards, with the Library Service an active participant. Bolton is the lead authority in the area of 'Cross Region Delivery Applications - e-purse, Transport and Authentication', part of the National Smartcard Project. Talis has worked with Bolton and the other project partners on the implementation of Smartcards for authentication in the library service. The service was launched on 15th February 2005.

The University of Birmingham is implementing a campus portal using the SCT Luminis system. Talis is working with the University to offer students integration with the 'My Account' functionality from Prism within the Portal, plus the ability to search the library catalogue in a single search from within the Portal. For further information on Birmingham's Portal project, the web site address is www.portalproject.bham.ac.uk/.

The University of Portsmouth has implemented a student portal based on the Novell portal suite. As part of integrating 'My Account' data from Prism into the Portal, Talis worked with the University to develop a new messaging suite which interprets the library account data as messages in the portal, such as: 'You have 1 book due for renewal within the next 5 days'. The service is now live to students at Portsmouth.

Queen's University Belfast has been developing its own single authentication solution to allow users to use their university number to log into different applications including Queens Online, their Portal, using LDAP as a "single source of truth". Talis has worked with Queens to develop a separate pluggable module for LDAP authentication within Talis Prism. The resulting development has been released as part of Talis Prism 1.2.

The University of Salford has been a pioneer in the use of Web Services to offer real-time integration between systems. The University approached Talis for help in integrating its Oracle-based Student Information System (SIS) with the Talis Library Management System (LMS). The resulting development enables students to register automatically with the library on joining the University without the overnight delays associated with current batch systems, and means that any changes in personal details are updated automatically between the systems. 

The University of Ulster led the Jisc-funded 4i project in collaboration with Talis, WebCT and Athens to integrate VLEs and Library systems. This project explored the institutional implementation of integrated VLE and library systems to provide users with contextual links and seamless access to appropriate online resources and services. It assessed the impact of such added value services on users, academic and library business processes.

The University of Sheffield has followed a home-grown approach to Portal development. Talis has worked with the University to integrate 'My Account' data from Prism into the University Portal. The University has been successful in taking Talis standard components and re-skinning them to integrate with the Portal.

East Renfrewshire has been collaborating with Talis and the online bookseller Amazon on Project Venice, a project which investigated the disposal of stock through second-hand book market on Amazon.

The University of Northumbria is partnering Talis on Project Bluebird, investigating the practicality of providing personalised RSS feeds for 'My Account' information from the Library System and to identify any issues arising. The trial ran from January to Easter 2005, with a limited number of subscribers.