In a recent posting Joseph Lucia alluded to the idea of pulling the
resources of many libraries together to create "next generation"
library catalogs [1], and below are a few more thoughts on the topic.
Jadedness
I asked some of my coder/hacker friends whether or not they thought
some sort of profession-wide collaboration could be facilitated to
build a catalog. The response was not overwhelmingly positive, but
the group was small. They seemed jaded. "We've been there. It didn't
work." Many more of them are not jaded. They are just looking for a
leader. They have little experience communicating their ideas in
terms that administrators understand and appreciate. It is often like
chatting with the auto mechanic. If you don't talk shop, then not
much communication goes on.
Concerted effort
Moreover, I really don't think a concerted effort has been made to
make people aware of open source and collaborative programming. This
is ironic since the profession is full of collaboration dating back
to the sharing of catalog cards, at least. Heck, collaboration is the
whole idea behind OCLC. Are libraries really not collaborators? Does
such a thing require too much administrative overhead? Is there too
much "friendly" competition between academic libraries to dream of
sharing people and technology? I don't think I am being naive here. I
just think it has not been a priority. Purchasing/licensing stuff is
easy. Working together is more difficult.
Coders/hackers and administrators
Some next steps might include the coder/hacker community working in
concert with administrators to reach out to regional networks. This
sounds like a good first step. I wonder how this can be done? What
are a few to-do list items that can be accomplished in 6 months, 12
months, and 18 months. What could we suggest as action items, and
what should coders/hackers do and what should administrators do?
Relationships
Creating stronger relationships with XC, Evergreen, and the DLF
sounds like a good idea to me too. I strongly believe the process of
creating these relationships is directly related to the number of
times people can meet face-to-face. That is difficult. "Out of sight.
Out of mind." I do not advocate a whole lot of formal, centralized
planning. That is not the way the open source community seems to
work. At the same time, we all don't need to be inventing the same
wheel, and/or we need to make sure the applications are
interoperable. Read this kind of data. Write that kind of data.
Communicate using this protocol. Adopt this or that standard (SRU,
Z39.50, NCIP, etc.). I do not think the folks of XC, Evergreen, and
the DLF are opposed to building stronger relationships. It is just
that going through the process is often times seen as extra work. It
is kind of like a marriage in that you have to keep working at it.
As a "non-resource allocator", I have only a tiny ability to set
priorities. At the same time I think is very important for libraries
to have more control over their computing environments. So much is
being outsourced to the commercial sector that it makes it difficult
to accomplish the library goals. Increasingly, we don't own our
journal literature. We license it. I think this might be some of the
future for books as well. The data regarding our holdings is locked
up in black box applications and we can't provide the services we
would like to provide. Mind you, I'm not pessimistic about the future
of libraries, as long as the profession makes some changes. We need
additional and alternative skills. Jointly working on the library
catalog is a great place to start.
[1] The original posting is at http://article.gmane.org/
gmane.culture.libraries.ngc4lib/3424. The thread was picked up on
code4lib at http://www.mail-archive.com/code4lib@listserv.nd.edu/
msg02115.html.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame
(574) 631-8604
Received on Fri Dec 07 2007 - 11:20:08 EST