> I'm convinced that the underlying "problem" with our OPACs (from a usability perspective) is that they are sold once to librarians, rather than many times to end users. If each user was making an individual purchase decision, OPACs would have quickly evolved to meet their needs. I believe ILS vendors (who we often unfairly blame) are quite capable of producing an awesome OPAC. But the vendors are building OPACs to meet our (i.e. librarians) perceived needs, because vendors are smart and are in business to make money and they understand that *we* are the ones writing that big check every 10-15 years or so.
I used to work in K-8 educational publishing, specifically the
technology side of it. The dynamic was very similar. We didn't write
software for students or the teachers or even the schools. We made it
for the state textbook committees. In the case of technology, we were
just a piece of a much larger thing, so we did it for some technology
subcommittee whose role was basically to approve or disapprove. We
called our work a "checklist item." And we did it once every 6-8
years. Between approvals, we had a monopoly. Oh, and because so much
money was on the line, the textbook committees would demand little
changes that made every state's or even district's textbook different
from the others, massively reducing economies of scale. Not
surprisingly, the technology that comes with your third-grader's
textbook is generally crap.
The situation with OPACs is much the same. Libraries make multi-year
purchases. The systems are monoliths, so something like the OPAC can
become a checklist item. Libraries want systems with "their" tweaks.
And the decision-making is a few steps removed from the people who
will use it most.
Received on Thu Jul 26 2007 - 11:05:21 EDT