Re: An X PRIZE for next generation catalogs?

I think this is a fantastic idea!  A prize to come up with a catalog
that will do everything we want it to do and do it well.  I wonder if
the X Prize people would be interested?  If not, we should look for
other ways to do this.  Even setting up the criteria for such a prize
might move us down the road and get current vendors thinking about ways
to do more.

Sarah Simpson
Tulsa City-County Library

Opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my
library.

-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Andrews, Mark J.
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 9:06 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: [NGC4LIB] An X PRIZE for next generation catalogs?

An old model of change is the "carrot and the stick."  Sometimes they
are the same thing; in business the carrot and the stick is (sorry to be
crass) money.  There's also prestige and the sheer fun of competition.

Now competition has not really decreased along with the number of ILS
vendors - witness the rise of Evergreen and Koha.  But those products
appear as overblown science projects from somebody's garage - somebody
had to pay for the kernel of those products to be developed.  The money
spent to create Evergreen and Koha was not spent on commercial products,
hence the "stick" - commercial vendors didn't get business they
otherwise might have had.

But what about the carrot?  Do we need an X PRIZE (see
http://www.xprize.org/) as a carrot for a next generation catalog?
Don't get me wrong - Evergreen is great, Koha is great, other open
source library catalogs are great, commercial products are great.  We
have competition, but we need more of it.  People don't work for free,
they need to pay the bill while they work and have something to strive
for besides the brief notoriety of some original, creative work - like
prestige, the fun of competition and yes, money.

So, do we need a neXtPRIZE?  How do we organize and fund it?  What's a
good amount?  $10,000?  $100,000?  More?

I'm good for $50, but I don't think that's going to get us anywhere.

Mark Andrews, Creighton University

PS - As my employer is in the midst of a fundraising campaign, I list
its name for identification purposes only - not to detract from their
efforts to raise money.  Or anybody else's efforts to raise money
either.  MJA