Introduction

The Sakaibrary project has an explicit goal to free library resources from silos within the library and make them available in other contexts – in this case, within the Sakai course management system. Instead of forcing users to interrupt their normal workflow to deal with dedicated library systems, selected sets of information and expertise unique to the library are being wrapped up in such a way that they can be used, seamlessly, within a student's normal course context.

For Sakaibrary as an application to function, it requires institution-independent mechanisms to gather and present library-specific data within Sakai. Once these services are available, it makes sense to explore how we can leverage them to extend the reach of library services even farther. By looking at the functionality inherent in the infrastructure necessary for Sakaibrary to function – collection and normalization of library data and services, OpenURL creation and verification, and collection of citations via metasearch — we can now ask how to effectively repurpose these services outside of the Sakai application environment.

Sakaibrary Research Guide

In trying to understand the opportunities available, we want to explore two concurrent issues:

• How to leverage the Sakaibrary infrastructure in new ways, as described above
• How to provide opportunities for instructor/librarian coordination and collaboration in bringing relevant library resources to students