Lean Library

Lean Library Futures

Reclaim the power of your library.

An ambitious new service bringing all of your library into your patrons’ workflows, increasing usage and relevance of your library services and resources.

Speak to a library consultant

Key Benefits

Bring the power of your Discovery Service to your patron’s preferred search tools

Your library’s discovery service is one of the most valuable tools you can offer your patrons – what if you could showcase its power within their preferred search tools, such as Google and Google Scholar? Lean Library Futures allows you to do this, increasing usage and supporting best-practice patron discovery.

  • 6% of patron searches go through the library’s discovery service
  • 40% of searches go through Google/Google Scholar

Source: Evans, G. and Schonfeld, R.C., 2020. It’s Not What Libraries Hold; It’s Who Libraries Serve: Seeking A User-centered Future For Academic Libraries.

Present relevant publisher content at the point of need

Ever wished you could nudge your patrons away from Wikipedia or Google and showcase the wealth of relevant content you have collected and collated for them? With Lean Library Futures, you can showcase relevant publisher content at the point of need – whether it’s research methods on Wikipedia or medical terms on Google.

…whilst putting your patrons in the driving seat

With Lean Library Futures’ ‘Workflow Librarian’ you can make relevant publisher content available to your patrons where and when they need it, in a discrete, minimizable sidebar they can trigger or ignore.

Take library guidance and instruction to the point of need, on any academic resource or website online

You spend hundreds of hours each year creating, maintaining and promoting library support materials, but it can be an uphill struggle to drive patron awareness and usage, with your patrons often having to step outside their workflows to access this material. With Lean Library Futures you can deliver these materials at the point of need, on any academic resource or website online.

View Case Study
Having invested so much time to  provide our patrons with library training materials, we want to see them used. With Lean Library Futures delivering our LibGuides into our patrons’ workflow, we have seen usage for a LibGuide increase by 450%.
Jason Folkman Electronic Resources Librarian, Utah State University

Bring the power of library curation into your patrons’ workflows, helping them evaluate content

Lean Library Futures gives you the ability to embed information literacy and library curation into the patron workflow, providing the additional context you want them to have, where you want them to have it – whether that’s their preferred search tools, publisher websites or other relevant academic resources. You control the context that is shown, whether that’s your preferred journal index, known predatory journals or your library holdings information.

Enhance your understanding of patron needs and sentiment, with point-of-use feedback

Lean Library Futures supports quantitative usage indicators like COUNTER with more qualitative indicators of patron engagement and feedback. These can be used to support your Collections Strategy or to build an understanding of where additional training and promotion might be needed. You have complete control over where and how this feedback is solicited, and with the ‘Workflow Librarian’ you can make optional feedback available on any academic resource or website, giving your patrons complete control.

PLUS all of the power of our access solution, Lean Library Access

Lean Library Futures includes all of Lean Library Access too, our comprehensive access solution driving usage, saving money and promoting your library.

Read more about Lean Library Access
We’ve used Lean Library for several years and I’m going to be honest – it’s one of my favourite bits of library technology!
Matthew Smith Academic Librarian, University of East Anglia