One of my jobs in life is to try to explain things, often quite technical things, in a way that it is easy for folks to understand – you don’t get the title Technology Evangelist  for nothing!

The architecture that underpins the new version of Talis Prism, which is just starting it’s beta roll-out, is very different from it’s predecessor.  This difference has many benefits associated with it that become clear with an understanding of the architecture.  In such an endeavour, I always believe that a picture is worth far more than several screen fulls of blog post, so over the last few weeks I have been working with my colleagues to try to come up with a good picture to represent the new Prism architecture – a process I thought I would share with you as we move towards finalising what we are doing.

There are two parts to the Prism architecture: the search & discovery functionality; and the Local Data Service (LDS) module which interfaces with the local library system for live actions like reservations & renewals.  For this first picture, to keep things even simpler, I am concentrating on the search & discovery functionality alone. I will return to the LDS at a later date.

Here is one of the first pictures we came up with:

Click on the picture for a larger view

It shows the Talis Platform at the centre of things with applications such as Prism around it, but doesn’t really clarify things much – so we tried another tack…

Again the Platform at the centre of things with API access radiating from it, supporting individual application business layers (the shaded-in segments) depending on those APIs.  Of course this raises the issue of what an application is.    In most contexts an application will consist of a user interface, coupled with some business logic, and some storage.  Although you can identify these elements in this diagram it is still not doing it for us – so we tried again….

This was getting much nearer – the Platform being shown as the foundation, with layers building on top of each other (the call-outs would describe the services each layer would provide)  to eventually support a user interface at the top.  Missing from this vision are the concepts that the Platform supports many applications storing all sorts of data; the layers above then specialise access to the platform (knowing what to do with bibliographic data for instance).  So taking these on board we tried this…

An interesting angle on the problem – lots of stores in the Platform – a clear UI->API->Platform stack, but a bit monolithic and constrained – how does it relate to other applications built on the Platform?  Moving on…

This one came even closer still – a generic Platform, containing lots of individual stores – the API layer above providing bibliographic specialisation – the user interface layer which is the view of Prism that folks get to interact with. – Still feels constrained, the Platform after all is a globally scalable service for building loads of applications, from Talis and others.  Skipping a few intervening attempts, we have ended up with with with what I think is the best yet, which is worth developing further….

A [Platform] landscape of many stores – your bibliographic data could be in Store A, another library’s in Store B, Store C could be supporting a Talis Engage community information application, Store D could hold reading lists, and so on.  The Platform, an API layer in it’s own right supporting all of these.   Specialisation  API layers (one understanding bibliographic data, another Community Information, etc.) sitting above the Platform using it’s services and in their turn supporting user interface layers which deliver the actual application to the users.

There are aspects of the architecture that are still not obvious.  For instance it is not clear that another application (a student portal, or a personalised desktop gadget, etc.) could directly access the API layer and present the data it provides totally independently from the User Interface supplied with the Prism application.

Much more to do, but we are getting there.  Hopefully gaining an insight in to our thought processes will help you with your understanding of what is basically a simple architecture, but with lots of power and flexibility.

I would be really interested in your comments on  how this process has evolved and if these drawings help in conceptualising what is behind the latest version of Prism and it’s sister products that are being built using the Talis Platform.

For a number of months I’ve been working closely wih development partner libraries and with developers to exploit the technology we now have to provide libraries with the online presence they need to thrive and prosper.

We’ve reached the stage where early adopters such as Southwark Libraries are beta testing the new Talis Prism alongside their existing catalogue. We’re getting some great feedback, not only from librarians but now also from library users.

The new Talis Prism has been designed and built to be highly customisable and extensible. In addition to the branding, we’ve tried out some ideas for the catalogue home page such as Southwark’s book recommendations and comments, and the links in the footer to other parts of the library service.

This is just a start. We’re continuing to work on more ideas for the content and styling, particularly on leading the user into the catalogue and enriching the experience with intersting and unexpected material.

That’s looking at it in terms of the public library experience, but we are also working with academic libraries to explore possibilities and preferences – more on that in later posts.

One of the issues for me at the moment is the relationship between the catalogue home page and the library home page. The library home page is the entrance to the online library and it should be possible to immediately search the library content, meaning the catalogue. The Talis Prism search box can be embedded there (or aywhere else), but what about all the recommendations, new material, most popular, and so on, to enrich the user experience right at the start?

There are some good examples, mostly in North America, where this is managed in one home page, such as the recent Bibliocommons at Oakville Public Library. In the UK, the fact that public libraries are part of the larger local authority with its wider corporate web concerns, is an interesting issue.

I’m keen to hear more views on these home page issues. Let me know what you think.

Hi and welcome to the Talis Prism blog.

I’m Terry Willan, Business Development Manager for Talis Prism. Having been involved with bibliographic data and catalogues for a long time, it’s great to be working on a new product with so much potential.

My colleagues and I will use this blog to talk about what we, and eventually you, are doing in the development, introduction, customisation and extension of the new Talis Prism, and we welcome feedback and discussion.