Interestingly the North American Aleph user group has recently moved away
from working with the supplier (Ex Libris) on individual enhancement
requests, and instead has an agreement to focus development on one specific
functional area at a time. However, even early into to trying this not all
libraries are happy they have lost the opportunity to vote for smaller
enhancements.
Having been involved in a process of Œincremental¹ enhancements I¹m
convinced that this type of Œimprovement¹ does nothing for the overall
development of the product, detracts from strategic product development, and
leads to much wasted time and resource for both users and suppliers.
Although I agree that libraries continue to have a need for Œacquisition¹
and handling multi-part items we end up getting very small changes to the
way systems handle these issues, when we should really be asking questions
about whether completely accurate prediction of when the next issue of x
journal is going to arrive is more or less important than redesigning the
subscription functionality to deal with electronic resources more
effectively.
Owen
On 26/4/07 14:41, "Shrader, Tina" <TShrader_at_NAL.USDA.GOV> wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Andrews, Mark J.
> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 5:09 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
> Subject: Re: WorldCat Local
>
> <after a cogent summary of the 'death of a thousand enhancements', Mark
> J. Andrews said:>
>
>> > For example, do I need a serials and acquisitions system?
>
> Do you intend to purchase information resources and do you want to track
> how you spend your money? Do you intend to purchase information
> resources that are published in multiple parts over time and do you want
> to be able to show your library's users what parts of those resources
> you can actually provide to them? If you intend to maintain those
> activities for information in ANY format, then you need a system to
> manage those activities.
>
> Philosophically, I absolutely agree that libraries spend far too much
> time hassling vendors to 'enhance' products that essentially need to be
> rebuilt from the ground up to accommodate new technology and the new
> activities in which libraries are engaged. But the fact remains that
> our current ILS's have evolved as they have to support basic activities
> that remain necessary: acquiring resources, fiscal management,
> description of resources, and control of inventory. We're still doing
> all of that, and we still need systems to support all of those
> activities. We also need systems that are flexible enough to allow for
> mashing up bibliographic information in new ways and communicating with
> library users in new ways. I'd hope that we can find ways to
> accommodate all of those needs.
>
> Tina Shrader
> CONSER and Repository Coordinator
> National Agricultural Library
> tshrader_at_nal.usda.gov
> Phone: 301-504-5210
>
Owen Stephens
E-Strategy Co-ordinator
Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham
Surrey
TW20 0EX
Tel: 01784 443331
Email: owen.stephens_at_rhul.ac.uk
Received on Thu Apr 26 2007 - 12:04:00 EDT