The final vote

We wanted to capture something of the mood of the day, and also to get a snapshot of what people were thinking. So, during the final tea break, we asked people to vote on the following questions:

  1. Do you want a shared LMS for Scotland?
  2. Do you think a shared LMS for Scotland would work?

We asked everyone to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to each question. Voting was anonymous.  We go the following results:

  1. 29 people wanted a shared LMS for Scotland, 3 people didn’t, and one person didn’t vote on this question.
  2. 24 people thought a shared LMS for Scotland would work, 9 people didn’t think it would work.

While the votes look overwhelmingly positive, it should be considered that the audience was self-selecting, and may be considered to have a bias towards the success of such a project.  However, the audience did include  a broad range of participants, from Directors, Associate Directors, IT Librarians, librarians responsible for library functions.  These groups have different agendas, some of which would bias towards and some bias against, such a shared project.  In voting, the group had more concerns about the success of the project—the barriers identified will certainly need to be carefully assessed in order to maximise the prospect of successful outcome.   In summary, it will be important to assess these outcomes in a wider SCURL context, with the outcomes of this day providing an excellent starting point for further discussions.

The response was a really good reflection of the mood of the day. In general, there was a great interest in and enthusiasm for the idea of a shared LMS. The success of SHEDL was given as an example many times during the day of how co-operation could work for everyone. This enthusiasm was also reflected in the practical questions throughout the day and a focus among all the groups on identifying the practical elements that would need to be managed if a shared LMS was to work in the real world, beyond our discussions.

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