Following the recent release to preview of the latest version of Talis Prism 3, we’re now beginning the beta test with five customers for those features that require an upgrade to the Local Data services (LDS) software.

The LDS runs in your local environment and handles dynamic interactions between Prism 3 and your local database, such as fetching availability information and managing renewals and reservations.

The main new features that require the LDS upgrade are Loan History, which will display under an additional tab in the re-designed My Account area that you have in the Prism 3 release preview, and the display of an ‘In Transit’ status in the availability area on the Item Detail page. The LDS software has also undergone major revision ‘under the bonnet’, providing the foundation for more efficient further development.

The beta test is expected to take several weeks. After initial testing by library staff using the library’s sandbox Prism 3 tenancy, the new LDS will be applied to the live local environment making the new features live for the beta libraries’ users, for a period of close monitoring.

We’re developing the LDS so that it can be updated automatically, making it much easier to deliver improvements in future. We’re including appropriate tools to allow you to remain in control, but crucially it eliminates time-consuming manual intervention. The beta test will encompass this auto-update aspect, so that the general release roll-out will be the last time manual intervention will be needed.

The version of Prism 3 that is currently available for preview works with both the old and new versions of LDS, detecting them automatically. We’ll leave it on preview for a little longer for you to check, but we’ll put it live soon to give your users those benefits that don’t depend on the new LDS.