Re: Whose elephant is it, anyway? (the OLE project)

Karen Coyle said: "We keep being held back by our legacy data. I don't know the solution, but we have to find a way to move forward in spite of it."

Very interesting dynamic here. How do we resolve this tension? 

I started working in libraries 37 years ago, at the tender age of 22. I started working with library technology five years later, in 1977. I retired with 30 years of experience in large scale applications of library technology.

Anyway, regarding Karen's comments about finding "a way to move forward in spite of...our legacy data." More and more I find myself thinking that "we" (librarians) won't be the ones to move forward with this. 

I'm thinking this will be done by creative folks from outside the library profession. And maybe, just maybe, I worry that libraries will be bypassed altogether.

Bernie Sloan
Sora Associates
Bloomington, IN


--- On Thu, 3/19/09, Karen Coyle <lists_at_KCOYLE.NET> wrote:

> From: Karen Coyle <lists_at_KCOYLE.NET>
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Whose elephant is it, anyway? (the OLE project)
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009, 9:22 PM
> We also need to look at the history of our data. Unlike some
> data
> creators, we have data that is decades old, and that has
> been
> transferred from paper systems to online systems to other
> online
> systems. Some on this list may be too young to remember the
> old Kardex
> systems for serials checkin, where each issue was written
> by hand on a
> Kard ;-). When the data was transfered to online systems,
> no one had the
> capacity to include the detail, so all that got transfered
> was a very
> brief summary. I have seen systems that do have detailed
> information for
> recent data, but it's almost worse when *some* of the
> data meets your
> needs but not all of it.
> 
> We keep being held back by our legacy data. I don't
> know the solution,
> but we have to find a way to move forward in spite of it.
> 
> kc
> 
> Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> > Exactly.
> > 
> > And in many conversations like this, one side says
> "Well, the STANDARDS are there to make that POSSIBLE,
> so obviously there's no problem here, it's just
> human error."
> > 
> > No, that's the wrong way of looking at it.
> SOMETHING is not working if _nobody's_ doing it.  That
> something might be that the standards are unworkable, or
> that the software we use doesn't efficiently support
> creation of the kind of data we need, or many other things.
> The general 'system' of humans and organizations and
> software needs to be examined to see what's going wrong
> and how to fix it.
> > 
> > So OLE has a big role in that.  You can't dismiss
> the neccesity of that by whining that the standards are
> there if only people would USE them. If nobody is, then
> something is wrong.
> > 
> > Jonathan
> > 
> > Stephens, Owen wrote:
> >>> But more than that, regardless of standards
> for passing the request, my
> >>> backend systems _do not maintain sufficient
> information to answer this
> >>> question_ for print holdings. I don't
> think my library is unique in
> >>> this, although it's also not universal.
> >>> 
> >>>     
> >> Exactly - I think you are understating the case in
> the last sentence - I would say very very few libraries
> maintain sufficient information.
> >> 
> >> Owen
> >> 
> >>   
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> -- -----------------------------------
> Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
> ph.: 510-540-7596   skype: kcoylenet
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