I hasten to add that the "Death of a Million Enhancement Requests" often
involves enhancements that are somebody's pet issue. Lo & behold, when
"somebody" changes jobs, retires or dies (hopefully in that order), the
"critical" enhancement is no longer critical.
A bigger question is "Do those 'Million Enhancement Requests' involve
some facet of library service THAT NO ONE, LEAST OF ALL LIBRARY USERS,
GIVES A RATS FANNY ABOUT AND THAT, PERHAPS, WE CAN STOP DOING. Sorry
for shouting, but can we start to have a conversation about *THIS*
elephant I the room?
For example, do I need a serials and acquisitions system? Maybe I need
an "Electronic Resource Management" product that also manages the
remaining print products in the library.
Mark Andrews, Creighton University
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Maurice York
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 3:56 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] WorldCat Local
Jonathan,
While I'm with you in spirit and can't disagree with any of your
points (and on alternate Tuesdays will make the very same argument), I
think there's a different spin to this responsibility question that is
at least worth exploring. To put a fine point on it, I'll use a
somewhat obnoxious syllogism, as a straw man. Vendors make money by
creating products that customers ask for (supply to meet the demand).
Libraries buy vendor ILSs. Therefore, libraries must have asked for
and wanted what vendors are selling.
One way to look at it is, naturally, that libraries are victims of bad
vendor products and need to wrest back control and responsibility over
our tools. I think we could just as easily state the flip side, that
vendors built exactly what we wanted and what we asked for, and we've
just woken up thirty years later to find that we didn't really mean
what we said. While their voices seem to be more muted than those of
librarians who declare that vendors don't listen or respond to what we
really need, I've heard my share of vendors complain that they would
love to innovate and exploit new technologies, but can't because
they're hide-bound by libraries asking for a parade of legacy tweaks
and features that consume all of their development resources.
I'm as profuse a cheerleader and proponent for open source,
collaborative, cooperative solutions as anyone I know, but I can't
help but pepper that with a dose of skepticism that the same
libraries that have killed the commercial ILS with the Death of a
Million Enhancement Requests by pursuing their own individual
self-interests will have much better success at "wresting back
control" to do it themselves.
It is apparent from the fact that every system and its third cousin is
rushing to implement faceted search (granted, the quality of the
facets vary...) that we found a way to voice a desire in a way that
was compelling enough vendors to act quickly on it. Now, that's only
one little piece of the next-generation catalog. Do we really want to
go through this for every piece? I think the workable solution is
going to come somewhere in between and may be built on an agreement
that goes something like this: We, the libraries, will stop paralyzing
you, the vendors, with a riot of discordant enhancement requests if
you, the vendors, will open your systems so that we, the libraries,
can hook into them and work with you to cooperatively build on them as
open platforms. Maybe then we will create a field in which "a thousand
discovery tools will bloom."
Again, not disagreeing, exactly, just floating a thought or two...
Best,
Maurice
************************************
Maurice York
Associate Head, Information Technology
NCSU Libraries
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695
maurice_york_at_ncsu.edu
Phone: 919-515-3518
Received on Wed Apr 25 2007 - 15:15:13 EDT