Re: Whose elephant is it, anyway?

Owen, I agree completely--thanks for standing up for the library as a 
whole organism!

Stephens, Owen wrote:
>> It doesn't really matter how well (or how poorly) "back room" library
>> systems are functioning if the public user interface doesn't work.
>>     
>
> This just doesn't make sense to me - if your back office systems are inefficient, you end up putting more staff time into what are essentially administrative activities, and subsequently less time into user facing activities.
>
> The whole of the library needs to work - you can't pick off one thing or another as 'key' - there is no point in having the best discovery system in the world if your users cannot access the resources once they have identified them - and if you haven't paid that subscription, or bought that book, then you aren't going to be able to access them. Conversely there is no point buying all this stuff if you keep the doors locked - this is chicken and egg stuff - you simply have to balance the investment.
>
>   
I think it's also true that in current systems (and probably future ones 
as well), the back office staff will be building the data upon which a 
significant part of the discovery systems will depend.  At least for 
physical items and licensed resources (and potentially for archival, 
institutional repository and other data stores), it's the back office 
staffs, not the public services folk, who will have to understand the 
data requirements and processes in order to optimize the availability of 
that data for all kinds of needs.  Clearly, users will need to be 
involved in this as well, both passively (as they use resources) and 
actively, contributing tagging, reviews, etc.  But if your backroom 
people are not trained and part of the picture, you're toasted.
> I think Tim has an excellent point - certainly in large institutions much of the back office activity carried out by library systems such as 'budget management' is often duplicating other systems - which you will have to interact with for audit purposes anyway, and in my institution we would certainly save time by integrating more closely between the ILS and corporate systems (something we are working on)
>   
Absolutely.  But the auditors and accountants care more about whether 
you're paying for what you ordered, not whether you can deliver that 
information to users, or even if you HAVE users.
> There is a challenge here - libraries are extremely varied - I work in a Unversity library and as such work in an environment with many 'corporate' systems which the ILS duplicates (needlessly in many cases). On the otherhand some libraries standalone, and need local budget management etc - so ILS vendors are pulled in more than one direction.
>
> In the context of this discussion I've been following the work on the OLE Project with interest, but I'm unclear from the working model of 'Acquire' http://oleproject.org/overview/ole-reference-model/acquire/ whether there is an vision of where this activity happens in terms of systems - I guess it is early days for this.
>
> I would say that the more I discuss this and consider the issues, I see a separation of Discovery systems from 'back office' systems absolutely key to getting back office systems working efficiently (not to say they shouldn't be joined up, but loosely rather than completely integrated).
>
>   
I agree.  But the critical point is how do we accomplish that 
looseness?  It seems to me that in order to even attempt this we need to 
have the back office and the public servants understanding each other's 
requirements far more completely, and working together to acquire and/or 
build systems that are flexible and amenable to change as we learn and 
evolve.

Diane