The deadline for the 2008/2009 SCONUL return is Friday 8th January 2010 (this Friday as I write). Much of the data needed for the returns are not known to the Library Management System. For example Section 1 has questions about floor space, Sections 3 and 5 cover staff and 8 covers library income.

There are questions that Talis Decisions can help with however – particularly Stock in Section 2, Loans, Borrowers and ILLs in section 4, and some of the data in Section 7: precisely which questions Talis Decisions can help with will depend on the data held.

There is a document on the Talis Developer Network which introduces a number of example reports which can also be downloaded from the TDN.

These example reports are written using Desktop Intelligence and should be regarded as exactly that – examples – and not simply downloaded and run without any understanding of how they work, or of the assumptions made in their design.

Note also that the Statistical return itself is subject to change, so the cross-references to the actual question numbers in the return may be not be wholly up to date: this is again congruent with the intention to provide an exemplar rather than an out-of-the-box solution (which could never be wholly satisfactory, given the differences in data and working practices between libraries).

If you have experience using these exemplars (for good or ill) please do add a comment to the blog: we’d love to understand more about how we can best support the production of SCONUL and CIPFA returns