QoS indicators

I suggest that QoS indicators are context driven.  My wife takes our son
to the local public library for story telling and to find board books
for little people.  QoS indicators for her would be an accurate
indication of the following:

   * Is the library open?
   * Are there any construction issues on the three most likely routes
from our house to the library?
   * Will someone be telling stories today?  Who, a favorite story
teller or someone else?
   * Where are the books - give me a range of Dewey numbers or a map of
the library.

Note that my three year old son won't be using an online catalog; he'll
be pawing through books saying "Thataone, thataone, no, No, NO -
THATAONE!"

Change contexts to the academic institution where I work and the needs
are different.  One thing that seems clear is that, since most physical,
academic collections are big, static piles of...scholarship, some
latency in inventory status may be acceptable.  Note, though, that we've
socialized our users and ourselves to real-time holdings, location and
status information, accessed via often obtuse, unusable public catalogs.

Andy, why not rig NCSU's Endeca catalog to look up the piece-level
status when the user asks for it?  Or does it already do that?

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Houghton,Andrew
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 8:06 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Quality of Service (was standards)

> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alexander Johannesen
> Sent: 21 June, 2006 06:32
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] standards
>
> Seriously, that the OPAC is 12 hours behind your ILS means probably
> very little.

I think Alexander hits on a topic that really hasn't been discussed.
What should the quality of service be for the next generation?  Is it
acceptable today, to have an OPAC 24, 12, 8, etc. hours out of sync from
the ILS?  What are other quality of service indicators for the next
generation?

Andy.