Today I spoke at the NyLink Annual meeting, but first Marshall Breeding started the morning with is talk entitled “Technology trends in library automation and resource discovery.”
Marshall pointed us to his ILS turnover report on his website which shows what ILS people had and what they have switched to. He also showed us what ILSes were being used in NY public libraries right now – and interestingly there are no Koha libraries on the list, however there are several academics in NY already on Koha.
I had to giggle when Marshall then told us that automation systems are complex because I was remembering a talk given by Chris Cormack where he said that originally he thought the ILS was just a big database and would be easy to write.
Marshall also went through his perceptions report and mentioned that interest in open source was surprisingly low overall – which just means I have to up my game and get the word out there about what open source is – because as you know I always feel that lack of education on a topic is the number one reason people fear something.
He went on to explain that people aren’t judging systems on features so much anymore, but on service offerings – this I feel is where the strength of open source can be found – since you’re not buying the software itself you’re buying the services on the system. Marshall also reminded us that the most important part of our ILS is the OPAC (or discovery layer) since this is what our users see – and the marketplace is showing this as well – people are putting their resources into improving their discovery layers.
As well all know we’re also dealing with libraries that are spending more on electronic subscriptions than print materials – so we need tools that will allow us to index and search that information. We need systems that will allow us to ingest digital formats and digital cataloging methods (formats other than MARC).
While Web 2.0 has been around for a while now, libraries are only just stating to adopt some of these technologies and philosophies – so we’re behind the times … so behind the times that Web 3.0 is in the works. Why are we always catching up? We have to change out thinking not only about the technologies we’re providing, but about the ways in which people will be accessing our information – phones, iPad, etc etc.
Marshall listed for us the variety of system types:
- Traditional proprietary
- Millennium, Symphony
- Traditional open source
- Koha, Evergreen
- Clean slate automation
- OLE, Ex Libris URM
- Cloud based
- WorldCat Local
The one thing we’re going to see across the board is openness – we want to be able to do things with our data. There are things that we want to do that our vendors can’t do for us. We don’t like black boxes that trap us!
When it comes to open source you shouldn’t go into it assuming that you’re going to save money – it’s not about the money – it’s about the openness associated with it. Marshall gave me a little glance when he said he wasn’t sure if saying that would keep him out of hot water – but I agree 100%. Some libraries will save money by going open source – others will pay the same – and others still will pay more. It completely depends on how you go about doing it and what you want from your support company.
What needs to change?
We need to make things easier for our patrons. Take a look at Amazon – it looks complicated and crowded, but people know how to use it! They don’t need a class on Amazon – but in our libraries we teach classes on how to search the OPAC! If we’re so worried about people turning to Google and Amazon instead of libraries then we’re going to have to make changes to our discovery layers so that it’s easy. Sometimes I (me not Marshall) think that librarians can be a bit snobby about their search skills and don’t want to “dumb” things down just because the patrons don’t know how to do our jobs … well in the end what it comes down to is keeping our doors open and our patrons aren’t going to keep coming if our systems stay the way they are.
Another thing to think of is keeping our website and our catalog seamless – like SOPAC2 does. One of my biggest pet peeves when working in the web department at the library was how hard it was to make my website and catalog look identical – not like you’re leaving one site to go another and it was not easy then – now there is no excuse!!
One of the mistakes we make with our current systems is that we ask the wrong question first – what type of material are you looking for? Books, Articles? When in reality all our users care about is what content you have on a topic – we need something seamless in this regards as well. Many would call this a federated search – but the federated search tools out there are not up to the standards of sites like Amazon and Google that are doing this already – we need more sophisticated technologies.
There are a lot of products on the web today – Vufind, SOPAC2, Blacklight (all open source), and more – which makes it surprising that so many libraries are still using the OPAC that comes without their ILS – out of date, ugly interfaces!
Don’t forget mobile….
While we start making out content more findable, we also need to work toward interfaces that can be viewed on multiple devices – computer, phone, iPad, etc. Individual apps for diff products is just a step in that direction, we need to come up with more integrated alternatives.
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Chris Cormack says on: June 7, 2010 at 2:44 am
It is just a big database (well not even that big in the scheme of things), it’s all the insane contradictory rules, with their myriad of exceptions, in the business logic that make it tricky. The computer science part of it is very easy, getting people to explain their rules is the hard part.
Nicole says on: June 7, 2010 at 7:13 am