open source reference desk software at the victorian parliamentary library

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Open Source Reference Desk Software

at the Victorian Parliamentary Library

Robin Gallagher & Peter Neish

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Who are our clients?

• Members of Parliament

• Members’ staff (electorate officers, party staff, ministerial staff)

• Parliamentary staff (especially parliamentary committees)

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Existing workflow

• Email or telephone queries

• Response emailed or printed and picked up

• Significant or common requests entered into Reference Knowledge Base

• Statistics recorded manually

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Workflow problems• Single reference task involved up to 6 separate actions

– Record query– Compile answer– Email client text & attachments– Copy text record & files into RKB– Record reference statistics on monthly form– Transfer statistics once a month to spreadsheet

• Difficult to know:

– what other Reference staff were working on – status of incomplete queries, if staff member absent

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Requirements

• Simple to use

• Capture statistics

• Integrate into workflow

• Capture frequent / important queries into our Reference Knowledge Base

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

What we built

• Web-based tool

• Integrates with LDAP

• Built in JAVA

• uses the Play! framework – MVC

– Hibernate and JPA

– Groovy templating system

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Department of Parliamentary ServicesParliamentary Library

Thanks

• Code will be available at github.com/pov