SELMS is a consortium of library services in the south east of England which has joined together to deliver better services for all its customers.

SELMS - reflecting our shared values of customer service, value for money and innovation.

In 2006, SELMS was established by six public library authorities. They came together to help deliver savings through shared working. A key aim was to offer their customers an improved, wider and more consistent service. Including the seamless use of all the library stock across the six authorities. The first step towards this was to award the Library Management System [LMS] contract to Civica Libraries, for their Spydus system. SELMS were their first UK customers and together their vision led to the creation of a shared LMS.

The consortium continued to grow, and we now have 14 library authority partners:

• Brighton & Hove
• Buckinghamshire
• Camden
• Hertfordshire
• Kent
• Medway
• Milton Keynes
• Reading
• Richmond upon Thames
• Slough
• Southend-on-Sea
• Southwark
• West Berkshire
• Windsor & Maidenhead

Today upward of 600,000 customers are borrowing over 18 million items a year across SELMS, from over 6 million items of stock. A SELMS customer only needs one library card to access almost 300 libraries, or if they choose, they can just log into their home library catalogue and reserve an item for local pickup.

SELMS Management

The administration of SELMS is based around a Memorandum of Agreement which each authority signs up to when they join. No matter how large or small the authority is, each partner has an equal voice.

There is a Steering Board that makes the strategic and budgetary decisions and a Development Group which covers the more technical areas. There is a representative from each authority on both.

The Development group helps to shape Spydus; working towards a consistent configuration and seeking innovative ways to enhance the customer experience.

The consortium employs two fulltime members of staff, Hilary Ballard, the Consortium Manager and Donna Henderson, the SELMS System Support Officer. Their roles can be summed up in all the usual management terms: co-ordinate, facilitate, project manage, negotiate, all focused on benefitting SELMS. They are the first point of contact for the system supplier and working closely with the Development Group, ensure all partner interests are represented.

Working as a consortium there are many savings to be made. With the single LMS, partners have been able to share many costs and achieve considerable discounts. This has included shared bibliographic resources and reducing the technical burden on system configuration and management.

Savings have also been made by sharing training costs and individual staff expertise, like Cataloguing and Procurement. They have shared their successful initiatives, best practice, business cases, and can quickly benchmark performance across SELMS. If a partner has a problem or a new project to initiate, in any area of the library service, there is usually someone across SELMS that can offer help. This ready-made pool of library expertise brings many hidden savings.

SELMS hosts a SharePoint site which allows for easy sharing of documentation, including training plans, 'how to' crib sheets, statistics and minutes of meetings. They have conference call facilities and email distribution lists. There is also a newsletter for all the staff across SELMS.

Despite being on a shared system, the Civica consortium solution allows each partner authority to have their own borrower categories and partition off their own customers. [DPA/GDPR compliant*] This enables partners to retain flexibility in the services they offer and to embrace local initiatives. It also allows them to offer different Civica functionality from their individually tailored public catalogue, like Archives and Events Management.

"Being part of a consortium can sometimes be challenging, there are compromises to be made on occasion. However, at a time when there are many demands on library services, with little resources, the benefits it brings well outweigh these." Hilary Ballard, Consortium Manager.

*Data Protection Act 2018, including General Data Protection Regulation standards