Iris over and Pegasus Librarian has a post explaining a little bit of why our library systems are the way they are. She says that she can empathize with vendors like Innovative, but not sympathize with them.
I’d take that one step further - I empathize with the staff - the people in charge of the programming - but they’re not the ones making the decisions, they’re just doing their jobs. The people making the decisions are the ones I have problem with - they’re the ones who need to take a step back, re-think things, listen to their programmers, and more importantly - they should be listening to us - the customer.
Iris says:
If [the ILS] were modular, each part could be engineered by people who had time to keep up with technology. If it were modular, the discovery system wouldn’t have to be designed by companies that excel in collection or budget management, for example.
There would be new problems with this modular approach, of course, and standards would have to be clear so that the modules could be seamlessly interoperable. But having a system that’s so big that obsolete code can’t be fixed unless the entire section is being reworked anyway is a long way from a perfect solution.
I agree - so no tar & feathers here.
Thanks Nicole. I’m so glad not to find myself sticky and be-feathered yet.
And I completely agree with your extension. I have a hard time imagining the super-higher-ups in the company thinking about much more than the bottom line. The staff, though… I sure hope they’re as frustrated with the state of things as it seems like they should be.