Reflecting On Trends
June 29th, 2005 by Michelle BouleThere have been so many great posts on this already, I am going to sort of skip the major summaries and get right to some reflections. I was surprised by the panel’s consensus that ILS and OPACs “suck”. I have long thought so, but it is not often that you get librarians stating that our main interface with which we greet the public is lacking is basic usability features. Maybe others have said it before, but it was the first time I had heard it so adamantly. What I heard overwhelmingly was that, as a business, libraries need to evaluate “disruptive” technologies and find ways to harness them for good. Many librarians see what we do as service rather than business, but I would argue that we do both. I think we need to take some queues from some other information businesses, Google anyone?, and re-evaluate how we present information to our users.
Karen Schneider made a point of saying that information has become more of a conversation, which she discusses in a post here as well. I have long believed that this was the true value of blogs, IM, wikis, and their ilk. We are now no longer fettered by physical constraints when it comes to discussing changes in our profession, our world, or our lives. Libraries who embrace new technology are opening up conversations between their users in Smalltown, USA and the rest of the world. Is your library embracing the world or building a wall?
July 15th, 2005 at 11:02 am
Both you and Karen have identified some underlying and disruptive trends that cause us to all seemingly agree that “OPACs suck”. At Talis we see the disruption under the heading, I guess, of “Web 2.0″, which of course encompasses “web services”. I think this is the major “tech trend” for the next few years. Our “Project Silkworm” (http://silkworm.talis.com/) is taking this very seriously –so much so that a member of our staff Ian Davis has even his own web site for Web 2.0. (http://www.planetweb20.com/ ). The white paper is a great summing up I think of what this is all about and what it might mean for libraries (http://silkworm.talis.com/_downloads/white_papers/silkworm_paper_13_06_2005.pdf)
At Talis we are blogging about this all the time too and have some interesting “examples” on our silkworm site of how maybe OPACs need not “suck”. (http://silkworm.talis.com/examples/index.html#). For example we can mix in a number of web services–a bit from Firefox and bit of OCLC X isbn, add in Amazon, and our own prototype “Silkworm Threadster” and “enhance” the OPAC–the OPAC vendor doesn’t even have to know it’s happened!
These are just very small beginnings but there is so much potential. Actually we don’t think either ILSs or OPACs suck really–after all we’ve been building them for over 25 years…But something’s up— watch out for Web 2.0!!
Ken Chad, Exec. Director, Talis
November 5th, 2005 at 9:37 am
Hmm…those complaining about how their ILS and/or OPAC “suck” might try writing one or the other and see how easy it is. It ain’t easy at all, judging by the number of smart people who’ve gone broke trying to deliver working product to libraries on time.
The folks behind Koha seem to have done an at least decent job at software development. I follow the Open-ILS project in Georgia, too. I spent 9 years in vendor land. It will be very interesting applying the same metrics (formal and informal) to libraries and librarians doing software development as libraries and librarians do to their vendors.
Librarians complain mightily (and rightfully so) about their vendors. Well the vendor pool is shrinking, and now libraries are going into the software business. Well, the metrics are invariant: can libraries deliver working software on time and under budget? Working, documented, trainable, maintainable software? Has anyone plotted out the lifetime costs of homegrown or open source projects? An aside - where did vendors like NOTIS and VTLS come from? Do we want to do THAT again in the name of control over products? Just curious.
November 10th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
The thing that is frustrating about OPACs is that there are other companies who find things for people, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, and their interfaces are not hard to use or understand. I realize that OPACs can be more powerful when used correctly, but not everyone can use subject headings to create a perfect search. Fewer and fewer librarians are able to do this and we are expecting our users to learn this?
I just think that we pay a lot of money for systems that do not work well because a) we have always had catalogs that worked a certain way b) libraries are slow to change and c) we do not demand enough from our vendors, but instead let them dictate to US what the product will be.
It is not the vendors’ faults. I think the fault lies mainly with librarians themselves.
February 15th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Hi all, just a patron here.
I’m very glad to see this interest in improving OPAC systems. I second Michelle’s position: do librarians use their OPACs, or do they have internal systems?
I’m asking because unless they’re eating the dog food, there’s a separation between the goal donors (the patrons) and the gold owners (the librarians), and that’s always bad for meeting goals of the product.