SEREN stands for the "Sharing of Educational Resources in an Electronic Network". It is a suite of software, developed as part of a project to

The SEREN resource discovery module offers the advantages of a free-standing web client, capable of handling simultaneous enquiries to any suitable Z39.50 targets on library catalogues.

The SEREN inter-library loan and electronic document delivery system employs a simple-to-use and robust Windows™ based document receiving and supply stations. This can be mounted on a relatively modest PC. Users can opt to be suppliers and receivers, or receivers only.

SEREN was designed to support co-operative groups of libraries, rather than individual suppliers operating on a simple commercial basis. Its flexible architecture means that it does not require a single central server, though at least one of the member servers will have to handle system administrative functions. Similarly, although each SEREN community needs access to at least one SEREN server, the server can serve multiple members. SEREN records the transactions, so that individual transactions can be traced and periodic settlements made.

SEREN is designed to handle enquiries in English or Welsh. It can easily adapt to other languages if they use web-supported fonts.

Although copyright precludes unmediated electronic document delivery direct to the requester’s PC, SEREN can be configured to deliver direct to user if copyright constraints are eased.

SEREN covers three distinct operations

Once at the SEREN web site members can use the Z39.50 client to search any Z39.50 compliant databases—not just those of designated supplier libraries. The user can choose which catalogues or groups of catalogues to search.

When the result set is returned the user then selects the required item and the system then performs a search against the catalogues of designated supplier libraries. The process of identifying a required item is therefore separate from that of requesting it. This means that if the item is not available from a known supplier then it can automatically be requested from a backup supplier, for example the British Library Document Supply Centre.

Because of the way in which it is constructed, SEREN’s Z39.50 client can be used as a general-purpose catalogue-searching tool.

The SEREN server assigns the request for an item to the supplying library. The request is packaged as a structured electronic mail message and transmitted to the supplier. The messaging protocol that SEREN uses is effectively a superset of the standard ILL protocol. We need more complex handshaking for the purposes of the accounting records that SEREN must keep, and their reconciliation — that is, we record more status changes than the ILL protocol currently accommodates. We are, however, investigating possible ways in which we can achieve greater compliance with the ILL protocol without compromising the functionality or integrity of the system.

The request is received at Document Supply Station (DSS). This is a specialised email client, which parses the request and displays it onscreen along with any other pending requests. A pick list can then be.

SEREN distinguishes between requests for returnable items (e.g. books) and items which may be scanned and transmitted electronically. The software will record and account for the sending of a physical item through the post.

When an item is to be scanned and transmitted electronically, there is an extra stage. The software controls any TWAIN-compliant scanner via the TWAIN interface. The item supplier is prompted to scan each page in turn (if the page numbers are known) until the entire document is scanned. The documents are then encoded using the PNG graphics file format, a lossless compression format, and sent as MIME attachments to the requester. A typical page of scanned text is may be 250K-300K in size, though pages with greater graphics content can be up to 500K.

The email message containing the encoded attachment is received by the Document Receipt Station (DRS). At the DRS, the user prints the document and accepts it. The electronic copy is deleted, for the purposes of copyright compliance. Full accounting records are kept by the system.

Although authorised end-users may enter requests into the system via the Web interface, they must collect a physical item (printout or original) from their "home" library. This is for copyright rather than technical reasons - the ability exists in the design of the software to deliver documents to authorised end-users, by means of supplying the end-user with a URL for the document. The DRS can generate a letter or e-mail to notify the user of its arrival.

SEREN is designed for use within a co-operative or a group of libraries or information services that act as a community. That is, each supplier knows each requesting institution. Accounting in SEREN is based on this principle. The main effect of this is that the burden of authentication is lower and there is less need for a secure payment system. Any library may be a requester, supplier, or both. It is expected, for reconciliation of accounts, that there is a central co-ordinator but this is not strictly necessary. Even the operation of the server can be outsourced, if necessary

Potential SEREN users might include interlending co-operatives; regional library systems; multi-campus libraries; distributed library systems in multinational companies, governmental or quasi-governmental bodies. The Z39.50 client is in itself a strong product and might have uses in the construction of "distributed" union catalogues.

After initial set up, the principal need for support arrises from changes to security mechanisms at individual sites. Typically a firewall might have to be reconfigured to allow the necessary traffic with the offsite server, or email virus checking software, which unpacks MIME-encoded messages and repacks them with different boundary markers.

In terms of system scalability the major limiting factor is the Z39.50 search. It has been suggested elsewhere that a reasonable upper limit on the number of concurrent Z39.50 searches is about 15. However, it is possible to link different SEREN communities together by common members, thus extending the "virtual" SEREN communities more widely.

SEREN was written from the beginning to be language-independent. That is, all the text in both the Windows and the Web-based software is read from tables and versions in different languages can be produced for the effort of translating the necessary text: no recoding is required.

The US Association of Research Libraries has stated that it would consider its North American Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery project complete when a user will be able to: