Inside Information

Library pioneers platform to provide functionality and flexibility for the future

As thousands of students enter and exit Walker Library every week, few—if any—are thinking about what’s going on behind the scenes of one of MTSU’s busiest buildings. Perhaps it’s a little surprising that many of the people behind the closed doors are committed to building an open and international community tasked with taking libraries into the future.

Just a few years ago, MTSU’s Walker Library and the University of Tennessee–Martin library became the first in Tennessee to transition to the FOLIO Library Services Platform—a system used by libraries to manage resources and services that are available to users. This platform, spearheaded by the Open Library Foundation, is open source and allows each library to build its system to match its needs.

“FOLIO’s openness gives us a lot of flexibility,” said Clay Oldham, who serves as the library’s applications support analyst. “The benefit of it being open is that we’re able to use it to pivot in a way that can fairly and equitably address user concerns, certainly more so than previous closed systems. All of the changes in FOLIO are community informed, and while there are tools already within FOLIO that can incorporate into a lot of libraries, we have the ability to also change it and make it work better for us.”

In the years since announcing its transition to the system, Walker Library has been joined by hundreds of fellow libraries, big and small, in adopting the system and joining the community. MTSU’s early adoption has given the school an opportunity to be an active participant in a community that includes librarians, developers, networks, and vendors.

An open system environment is almost like a democracy,” Oldham said. “You have to participate, and you have to be involved to ensure that it’s an informed community. It looks different, and you don’t have the luxury of being lazy about it either. The more involved we are, the more the system addresses our needs.

Data security and privacy provide an additional benefit in the system, without need of a third party.

“For us there are also major ethical motivations to stay within an open environment,” Oldham added. “These kinds of systems allow us to have more direct control over the direction of the library, our tools, and our resources. It also lets us make sure that our data is kept responsibly and not by another entity. That’s important to us as well.”

The system changeover may not have been immediately noticeable to users, but the functionality proved to be quite a large undertaking as it directly affected the library’s online catalog, JEWL Search, and checkout services.

“Everything that we’re attempting to do when we work within this system is with patrons in mind,” Oldham said. “I think the real advantage of being open is that we can always make sure that the concerns of our community are better reflected in the continued development of the product. That makes us a better library.”Data security and privacy provide an additional benefit in the system, without need of a third party.