Tim,
I think you're probably right in that anyone would be hard-pressed to
stem the tide of this particular development model. That said, however,
LibraryThing's BUSINESS model is radically different than that of a
"traditional" automation system vendor's. The established, deep-rooted
systems in place now are meant to preserve a perpetual profit mill.
The types of tools that make building web apps as easy as you say are
just not available to the average library because to make them available
would be to short-circuit our vendor's business model.
In-and-of-itself, that's not a concern to me, until it becomes clear
that moving our existing systems toward that lovely place you describe
is not in the best interest, at all, of the people selling us the
software and support.
So you're absolutely right, Tim. The LibraryThing model is very much
what I would expect and want from a next-generation ILS (not OPAC, mind
you). Only a handful of my co-workers, however, would even understand
that, so getting peoples mind around the entire concept is the big
challenge here.
John
-----Original Message-----
<snip>
It comes down to this. Web aps. are becoming radically easier and
cheaper to build and run. They are becoming almost a comodity. OPACs
*ARE* web aps. Therefore, OPACs will, or at least should, go down the
same path, and soon.
Convinced?
Tim
On 6/19/06, K.G. Schneider <kgs_at_bluehighways.com> wrote:
> > > Make the system friendlier, spend less money on hand-hewn metadata
> > > and more on books and services, etc. I have to wonder if a tool
> > > such as LibraryThing wouldn't support such a library's needs
> > > better than any traditional ILS.
> >
> > You do realize that LibraryThing is chock-full of "hand-hewn
metadata?"
>
> Yes, actually, I do. If I my post seemed to imply that LibraryThing
> offered any sort of automated entity extraction, let me clarify that I
> wasn't trying to say that.
>
> > FWIW, I certainly would agree that cataloging as it exists now is
> > much more complicated, labor-intensive and expensive that it needs
> > to be. So greatly simplify it yes, but don't pretend that there's
> > no human source behind the metadata in services like LibraryThing.
>
> No pretensions whatsoever. My comment about LibraryThing was a broader
> observation on the order of "a significant amount [but by no means not
> most or all] of whatever it is we get from the traditional library ILS
> may be delivered just as well by LibraryThing." It's a parallel
> analogy to "cheaper metadata is not necessarily worse than expensive
> metadata." If two brands of potato chips are just as good, then buy
> the cheaper brand; it leaves more money for onion dip.
>
> Not only that, but just in case this point gets lost in this response,
> I also weighed in with my 2 cents that I believe librarians have a
> role in shaping and refining computer-assisted metadata.
>
> Infomine has some interesting capabilities in the automated-extraction
> department, and I'd really like to see the Infomine folks pitch in on
> these discussions. It could be that after all they've done in the web
> portal arena (in re iVia) one highly relevant application ends up
> being traditional library stuff.
>
> Karen G. Schneider
> kgs_at_bluehighways.com
>
.com
>
Received on Tue Jun 20 2006 - 12:57:25 EDT