Many North American libraries have, over the years, provided public
access to OCLC, RLIN, and CATSS, mostly with fairly underwhelming
results. Using these (well, I guess they are all one system now!)
systems as gateways to both national and local holdings seems logical on
paper, but would suffer from many of the same problems that plague our
local ILS. Namely, system and network availability, response time due
to processing in the background (ongoing cataloging, local system
maintenance, etc.), and interconnectivity to local systems for holdings
data. If you have ever used a local Z39.50 client, LC's Z39.50 gateway
(http://www.loc.gov/z3950/gateway.html), or one of the Web catalog
gateways, you know how often catalog IP addresses change and how
maintaining lists of thousands of these would be a never-ending task.
Another consideration is the strain on local systems if they were open
to anyone who chose to drop in from a national gateway, like OCLC. The
LC catalog and Z server are clogged with users already, and locally we
have found significant response time degradation based on just dozens of
school library catalogers who are broadcasting Z39.50 searches to
hundreds of catalogs at once using BookWhere or ITS.
The answer at this point in time, I suspect, is still "think globally,
act locally". Separating search from the ILS makes sense in terms of
response time and perhaps even server vulnerability, though I know of no
denial of service or other malicious attacks on the OPAC thus far! It
is interesting that the library community is coming back to this point,
as modularity was a much-touted virtue of some ILS vendors ten years
ago. MARCorp, which was eventually bought out by Endeavor, which was
eventually bought out by you-know-who, used to market each of their
modules (cataloging, acq, circ, OPAC, etc.) as suitable for use with
other vendor's ILS products. More recently, ExLibris has sold hundreds
of SFx and MetaLib systems to libraries using other vendor products for
their ILS. The days of buying a whole system to get one or two
"must-have" modules are certainly behind us, though in most cases the
spin off products "work better" (are better integrated) with the same
vendor's ILS.
Charley
Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
> d. scharf wrote:
>>
>> I'm just wondering
>> where the leadership is going to come from to make the next big leap,
>> which
>> we all agree is sorely needed.
>> ... To effect change you have to also figure out HOW it can happen.
>>
> One clue to a new business model might well be "decoupling the OPAC".
> But it should by now be feasible, in large parts of the world, to not
> just decouple but *outsource* it.
> On a small scale - but not smaller than the initial OCLC - that's what
> Tim Spalding is doing: people are running their private OPACs in his
> box. [Gee, why haven't they bought him yet?]
> What if OCLC threw their gates wide open to admit the general public to
> add location symbols as well as tags, and add in some or all of
> LT's functionality? And then open that functionality to libraries as
> well, adding a protocol that extracts local data, as needed, from
> library ILSs to display along with OPAC data. Library patrons, and in
> fact everybody, would search a much much larger database that does
> double duty as their (local or personal) library's inventory.
> This is the scale that requires leadership, but huge sums of money too.
>
> Well, alternatively, OCLC might keep the cataloging business but sell
> their data to the biggest bidder, or join forces with whoever would
> be able to run the OPAC provider business. There are not too many
> companies with the resources to do so... Outside the US? Hm.
> But they *are* in business with G. already, are they not? Those
> timid steps might be followed by a much bigger leap.
>
>
> B. Eversberg
--
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Charley Pennell mailto:cpennell_at_unity.ncsu.edu
Principal Cataloger for Metadata voice: (919)515-2743
Metadata and Cataloging Department fax: (919)515-7292
NCSU Libraries, Box 7111
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-7111
Adjunct Librarian, Memorial University of Newfoundland
World Wide Web: http://www.ibiblio.org/hillwilliam/chuckhome.html
Cataloguer's Toolbox: http://staff.library.mun.ca/staff/toolbox/
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Received on Thu Jun 22 2006 - 11:26:18 EDT