Greetings-
I am impressed with the message from Mark Andrews and need to say it publicly. I anxiously await responses to what Mark said. I agree with his thoughts on the subject 100%.
I am not able (nor willing at this juncture) to precisely state what the problems facing libraries are, but I struggle with that question almost everyday. Identification of the problems, and I know we have plenty in our world (libraries), is key to marking the path to the solutions. And there are solutions. But if the "next-generation catalog is a solution in search of a problem", then we had better start rethinking everything. As a matter of fact, we need to do that anyway. Sorry for moving slightly away from the stated topic of NGC4LIBs. This is a great list.
Thanks,
Gary
_____________________________________
Gary L. Harris, Assistant Director
MOBIUS Consortium Office
University of Missouri System
3212 A Lemone Industrial Blvd.
Columbia, MO 65201
http://mobius.missouri.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Andrews, Mark J.
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 9:50 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: [NGC4LIB] Commercial web site/ILS mash-ups, plus a few observations
Andy, Ross (and anybody on the list),
Did you pick up Mack's comment "...wouldn't it be good to try an ILS/Amazon or ILS/Google mash-up?" Or words to that effect, I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth. Is anybody doing this? Is it a good or bad idea? Good idea: it gets away from ILS and OPAC-centric thinking, and (this is important) gets the library and library resources to a public place with traffic. More on why this is important presently. Bad idea: hooking the library cart to the Amazon or Google horse has brand, site focus and privacy implications, to name a few things just off the top of my head.
- Brand: conflating a commercial brand with an institutional one, be that institution a local governmental subdivision or an educational institution. Seems to me that relationship would have to be worked out in some legal and fiscal way.
- Focus: Amazon, for example, is a commercial site; libraries, generally, are not. Is some distinction necessary here and can our patrons make that distinction. Is the distinction important or necessary.
- Privacy: commercial sites mine every mouse click for commercial potential - that's business. Generally, libraries don't do that. That doesn't necessarily mean libraries can't or libraries shouldn't.
Okay, back to associating the library with great, big, commercial sites with heavy traffic: echoing my previous post about whether anybody gives a rats fanny about libraries any more, and if our attitudes don't reflect a certain professional "inferiority complex," Dan Lester replied "no inferiority complex here," "here" meaning "on this list." Probably not most other places in library land, too. I'm going to try to clarify my thinking here and I'd appreciate your feed back.
We can't discuss what an ILS is supposed to do apart from what the library is supposed to do in a given context. I keep asking myself "Are libraries relevant?" "Are libraries necessary?" The Internet and associated search engines have the world into "meatball searchers" (remember the line from M.A.S.H. about "meatball surgery," which was just barely good enough to keep body and soul together to get somebody to a real hospital? That's what I mean). The democratization of of publishing, searching, commerce, and software development the Internet gave and gives us is a great thing. Libraries, like the vendors who help us, are still trying to find their place in the new landscape.
I saw a web site recently, with a caricature of the librarians running the site about their work. It was a Shiva-like image, with hands in blogs, wikis, catalogs, Podcasting, FaceBook, and every other fad & trend. There was lots of chatter on the site about Library 2.0. I didn't have any sense there was a unifying principal behind any of this furtive, technological activity. "We have to learn about this stuff." Well, yeah, we have to learn about this stuff, but why are we learning and where are we going?
I worked 5 years in a public library, 9 years for library automation vendors, and 5 years for a mental health agency as the I.T. manager. I can count on one hand, not even one hand, the people and organizations I'd look to for examples of vision, leadership, organization and managerial acumen, in or adjacent to libraries. The biggest problem with the vendors was great ideas, but failure to execute them in a timely manner in a changing market place - that and the utter fear and dissociative behavior employees have about calling a BS on management when Things Are Not Working. Now libraries provide a useful service, or at least they have up to this point. We have capable "retail" folks, technologists and project managers, certainly for building projects and certain technology projects. But librarians are winsome when it comes to sales, marketing and a kind of assertive, competitive, fearless, shameless self-promotion that, combined with vision, leads people to seek you out!
. Who in business, industry and government seeks out senior library management for these skills, and hires them because they are demonstrably best-of-breed - NOBODY.
I saw a comment earlier that "the vendors aren't giving us what we want." Who's fault is that? Why on earth are we waiting for the presidents of ILS vendors to tell us where we're going at the annual user's group meeting or ALA annual or mid-winter? These folks work for us, remember? We tell the vendors where we're going - they follow us, not the other 'way 'round. Ironically, this requires that we libraries and librarians need a clearer, crisper, measurable sense of where we're going; what I perceive as the historically relaxed method and pace of planning and change leaves us begging for crumbs year after year after year in city, county, state, school and higher ed budgets.
The vendors have given us exactly what we asked for: software to manage a big box of books, and so what? To paraphrase Shakespeare, the problem is not with our systems but with ourselves. Where is the entrepreneurial fire in libraries anymore? I find it at NCSU with their Endeca-based catalog. I find it at Notre Dame with the MyLibrary portal (which came from NCSU). I find it at the Seattle Public Library. I find it at Bucknell University. Let's imitate these folks, not so much in their technology as in the process that led up to realizing "We need a tool that does this. Let's do a project." Information storage and retrieval theory, and user interface optimization only begin to be useful inside those projects.
The next-generation catalog is a solution in search of a problem. The problem we're trying to solve is not entirely clear. If your library closed today would anyone notice? If the library had to charge for its services, would anyone pay? How much would they pay? What services do we need to stop providing? What services do we need to start providing? How do we make these services known? Building on past and present success, how to we define success today and achieve more of it?
Mark
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Mark Andrews, MLS
Systems Librarian
DoIT Academic and eLearning Technologies
L 32 Reinert Memorial Alumni Library
402.280.3065
mja30807_at_creighton.edu
AIM: mja30807
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Received on Thu Jun 15 2006 - 11:44:06 EDT