Talis Information Ltd scooped a prestigious contract to supply Peckham's striking new landmark library and information centre in the London borough of Southwark.
The London Borough of Southwark is extending its Talis Library Management System throughout the new library, IT and multi media centre which is set to bring new learning and career development opportunities to the local residents of the London borough of Southwark and beyond.
The library, designed by Will Alsop of leading UK architectural practice Alsop and Stormer, combines forward thinking design with the practical elements required of a working library and is the culmination of over two year's work and around £6.5million investment.
Leader of Southwark Council, Councillor Stephanie Elsie will be joined by the Right Honourable Chris Smith MP to open the new library on 15th May.
Commenting on the implementation of the Talis system, Adrian Olsen, Head of Southwark Council's Library Services said, "Peckham Library aims to attract a broad cross section of the general public and in particular people from ‘target' groups who haven't traditionally used libraries, such as teenagers and people from ethnic minority groups."
"The Talis Library management system will play an integral part in helping to provide a first class service to our users. It will also enable us to monitor overall usage within the library and benchmark our performance against that of other libraries across the country."
Tony Hall, Managing Director for Talis Information Ltd said, "Talis has a proud history of creating and developing tailored information solutions for a variety of public and academic libraries. As the market leader in library information services in the UK, we were delighted to be able to supply our products to a landmark project as prestigious as Peckham Library."
"The system we have delivered in Peckham reflects the size and scope of the project and its objectives and we believe that it will play a key role in enabling and measuring the library's future success."
In addition to the Talis Library Management System, Peckham Library also utilises hardware systems supplied Sun Microsystems. Sun provides hardware structures that have high reliability and are flexible in adapting to future use, combined with constant availability.
Peckham Library is set over four floors. It's main features are a One Stop Shop offering information and advice on a wide range of issues, a Learning Centre offering structured courses on information technology within a special training suite, an administrative area for staff and the library's centrepiece, a lending collection interspersed with numerous computer terminals and offering spectacular views over the nearby Millennium Eye and Tate Modern Gallery.
Three unique ‘pods' also rise from the lending collection area on the fourth floor of the library, affording space for an African Caribbean Literature Centre, Children's Centre and a Meeting Room.
The library was opened to the general public on 8 March.
Benefits of the Talis Library Management System The Talis Library Management System has been designed to meet the needs of large, public, academic and special libraries, with high performance functionality, connectivity to external systems and services and an open architecture. Integration with the Talis central database of over 18 million records, provides unique benefits for acquisitions, cataloguing and reference staff. All processes are streamlined by immediate access to authoritative bibliographic data for over 95% of normal library stock intake. The Talis Library Management System is backed by Talis' excellent Customer Support that includes a dedicated installation team and the Talis Help Desk, which handles all system enquiries. For further information please contact James West or Sarah Hughes on 0121 236 7532 or email: jamesw@harrisoncowley.com