I think the "back room" issue is only interesting insofar as it throws
another light on the problem.
The ILS is a weird idea now in today's tech world. Libraries are
nearly unique in maintaining giant agglomerated, non-standard systems
for activities like data storage, data transfer and order tracking.
That sort of industry-specific software was common decades ago, but
it's faded, in favor of general, modular, off-the-shelf systems, with
customizations on top.
Maybe the problem is the whole idea of "library systems."
Received on Sun Mar 08 2009 - 22:53:55 EDT