ILS

CIL2010: The Global Library Automation Scene

by David Lee King on April 14, 2010

Notes from a talk I attended …

Speaker: Marshall Breeding

Current State of the Industry:

Check out Marshall’s Library Technology Guides (www.librarytechnology.org) – great info on who is using what ILS systems, what libraries switched ILS systems, etc.

Most used ILS software in the world: Isis ??? never heard of it! Marshall’s point – there’s a lot happening in the global ILS industry that we don’t really know about in the US

Horizon is next to last on the list of “how satisfied is your library with your current ILS system?” – Great – that’s what we have!

Marshall does say take those stats with a grain of salt – people on both ends of the spectrum respond, people int he middle don.t That said, he’s gotten over 2000 responses to his survey.

Observations from his 2009 Perceptions report:

- small libraries generally receive higher perception scores.
- Companies supporting proprietary ILS products receive higher satisfaction scores than companies involved with open source ILS systems

Discovery Platforms are mattering a lot more right now – that’s what our patrons see, so libraries want to spruce those up.

Library users in transition:
they don’t want help in the beginning anymore.

Tech in transition – web-based, cloud-based is the new thing. Client/server is the old thing. Local computing is shifting to cloud platforms.

Full spectrum of devices – mobile, web, tablet, etc…

Evolutionary Path: ILS systems are slowly evolving – they are wrapping their legacy code in APIs and Web services

Revolutionary Path: Ex Libris URM, Kuali OLE, WorldCat Management System

What does it mean to be open?

Interestingly, open source systems generally run behind proprietary systems in terms of customer-facing APIs… which makes sense. Smaller libraries are using the open source system, larger libraries with complex problems are using the proprietary systems.

Cool – he has a table showing what discovery layers work with what systems – http://www.librarytechnology.org/discovery.pl?SID=20100413922332763

Tagged as: Automation, ILS, library catalogs, Marshall Breeding, OPAC

Be the first to comment

COSUGI Conference in March 2010

by David Lee King on December 17, 2009

Sorry – had a hiccup there. In March, I’m speaking at the COSUGI Conference! OK – I asked the same thing…. “what in the world does COSUGI stand for?” It stands for “Customers of Sirsidynix User Group Inc.”

Anyway, I’m giving a keynote and a couple of executive track sessions – on digital experience design and on reaching out to customers through virtual services (this one with MPOW’s Library Director Gina Millsap).

Here’s the blurb for the conference:

*******************************

Three action packed days. 100 informative sessions. 1,000 fellow SirsiDynix users.

Join us in warm, sunny Lake Buena Vista, Florida March 3rd, 4th and 5th for the 2010 version of the SirsiDynix COSUGI Executive Track Conference. This comprehensive three day information and training extravaganza will have you pumped and ready for an outstanding year ahead. You’ll get the latest news and product developments from SirsiDynix leaders, while industry movers and shakers share their knowledge and insight.

Find out:

* How SirsiDynix develops new product ideas
* How to get the most from your technology investments
* What makes a memorable digital experience for library patrons
* How to use market segmentation studies to get past the guesswork
* How to stay on strategy in tough economic times
* And much more!

You’ll also have the opportunity to socialize and network with your peers, and actually kick back and relax a bit, too. And don’t miss the gala SirsiDynix shindig on Wednesday night. Mark your calendar now, start packing your suitcase…and don’t forget the sunscreen. We look forward to seeing you in Florida!

You don’t want to miss the chance to connect. For the Full 2010 COSUGI Executive Track Schedule click here.

For more information about the entire conference, visit the conference home page.

March 3 – 5 | Walt Disney World Coronado Springs Resort

******************

Enjoy!

Tagged as: codi, cosugi, ILS, sirsi, sirsidynix

Be the first to comment

Next Generation Library Interfaces

by David Lee King on January 24, 2009

ALCTS President’s Program: Breaking Down the Silos: Planning for Discovery in Library 2.0 – an ALCTS Midwinter Symposium

Marshall Breeding – title of his presentation: Next Generation Library Interfaces: Overview of concepts and a brief tour of commercial and open source products

My random notes from Marshall’s presentation:

Started with OCLC Perceptions stat – where do you start an info search? 89% search engines… library catalogs, 2%

usage of library websites is going down, everything else is going up … hmm…

aside – that makes a good case for sticking library content on blogs… users will find you that way

Crowded landscape of info providers on the web – google, amazon, us, etc…

Nobody has to go to a bibliographic instruction class to use Amazon… Nice.

Amazon is so easy to use – Marshall accidentally bought a book during a presentation, it’s so easy

Demand for compelling library interfaces:

urgent need for libraries to offer interfaces their users will like to use
move into the current millenium
search in line with how the current web works

inadequacy of ILS OPACs:

OPAC modules … failing to meet customer needs – it’s not really built for customers

Change is Underway! Lots of movement to break out of the current mold of library catalogs

Marshall hopes the back end will be redesigned, too, to be more modern

Next-Generation Interfaces:

redefinition of the library catalog – the word “catalog” is not a good one

more elegant presentation (think amazon)

more comprehensive info discovery environments
no longer enough to provide a catalog limited to print resources
digital resources cannot be an afterthought
systems designed for e-content only are also problematic
forcing users to use different interfaces depending on types of content becoming less tenable

federated search currently operates as a plug-in component of next-gen interfaces

web 2.0 flavorings:

strategic infrastructure + web 2.0
a more social and collaborative approach
web tools and tech that foster collaboration
integrated blogs, wiki, user reviews, etc
avoid 2.0 info silos – don’t have separate blogs, wikis, etc – make sure it’s integrated

2.0 supporting tech:

web services, xml apis, ajax, relevancy-based search engines, social networking tools and concepts

scope of the next gen library interface:
attempt to collapse silos or draw appropriately from each silo
unified user experience
single point of entry into everything
print + electronic
local + remote
locally created content

Functions and features:
Interface features/user experience:
simple point of entry – optional advanced search
relevancy ranked results
facets for narrowing and navigation
query enhancement – spell check, etc
suggested related results / recommendation service
enriched visual and textual content
single sign-on

Relevancy Ranking:
Endeca, Lucene do a good job
web users expect this! – the good stuff should be listed first
users tend not to delve deep into a result list
good relevancy requires a sophisticated approach

new paradigm for search and navigation:
users drill down through the result set and faceted browsing
faceted search – gives users clues about eh the number of hits, etc – it’s more like an online store’s faceted/guided navigation
more visual, has navigational bread crumbs

talking about boolean – walmart doesn’t teach their customers to do fancy boolean search to get to their products… we shouldn’t do this either!

Amazon doesn’t say “no results found.” Did you Mean and other features instead
validated spell check
have More Like This recommendation service
goal – make the query and the response to it better than the query provided

appropriate organizational structures:
LCSH vs FAST (faceted application of subject terminology)
full marc vs dublin core or MODS, or unstructured data
discipline-specific thesauri or ontologies
“tags”

enriched content – book jacket, summaries, etc

personalization/single sign on

deep search:
entering post-metadata search era
web searches full text. Google print, google publisher, open content alliance, etc
high quality metadata will improve search precision
commercial search providers already offer search inside the book
library search doesn’t do this!!!

Beyond discovery to fulfillment / delivery: this is the harder part – harder than discovery

Enterprise integration:
ability to deliver content and services through non-library apps
courseware, portals, social networking environments, etc

Great Benefit, Great Cost

We’re WAY TOO SLOW. Time on the web moves quickly! We need to catch up.

ideas to buy/use:

Endeca – one of the first
Widely used in the commercial world
high-dollar approach

aquabrowser:

LibraryThing for Libraries:
Wow – they are now distributed exclusively by RR Bowker

Primo: tailored for academic libraries

Encore from Innovative Interfaces (Nashville Public Library uses it)

Worldcat Local

TLCs LS2 (Shanandoah Public Library)
good visual design

SirsiDynix Enterprise
not aware of anyone actually using it yet
it’s a hosted product
does relevancy wel
uses chilifresh for book reviews
Marshall’s example is very ugly! Sirsi really needs a visual designer!

Scriblio:
Wordpress – looks great
Marshall’s not sure how it will scale
same stuff – faceted search, relevance, etc

VUFind:
production cat for the National Library of Australia – that’s pretty big.
open source, looks great

BiblioCommons
focuses on social networking
tag, review, comments, etc
oakville public library in ontario – in production.
Looks great!

Summon
serials solutions produst
eXtensibe Catalog

Polaris, Koha, Evergreen – doing well with providing next-gen features too

Q/A:

question/comment: we have a next-gen catalog, our faculty don’t get it – don’t understand faceted search, don’t know what a tag cloud is, etc – how do you get around that?

Answer: well, Amazon doesn’t seem to need to explain their faceted search, tag, etc stuff… ouch!

Tagged as: alamw09, ILS, library catalogs, marshallbreeding, next gen, OPAC

15 comments

IL2008: Implementing a Next Gen OPAC

by David Lee King on October 22, 2008

Speaker – Jeff Wisniewski

problem: old opacs weren’t designed for usability
- they were designed for the back-end of libraries
- designed to store data

Look at Jeff’s library’s OPAC – pittcat – much nicer looking than most other opacs (it’s still in beta)

they plan on keeping the more traditional-looking opac search for the forseeable future – eventually they’ll look at useage stats and go from there.

goals for new interface:
- does it have an intuitive interface?
- zero instruction needed, like amazon’s search interface
- no dumb error messages
- expose more of their collection (faceted search thing)
- integrate various silos (other databases they had, locally-created stuff, etc)
- get it up and running yesterday!

If you can, don’t do an RFP. It’s sorta backwards, hard to write, frequently states the obvious

instead, they made a features list
- must have
- highly desirable
- and a third category
- had to have the must have features

made a spreadsheet for the selection process with each vendor and their features listed.

Do this for your users – not your staff!!!
- boolean, advanced search, etc – your users DON’T CARE. So don’t offer it.
- resist the power search…

they renamed the old catalog the “classic” catalog – funny!

Do publicity on the new thing!

Usability
- call it what it is – map, not cartographic resource; music, not sound recording (that’s what the majority of them are)
- hyperlinks – you can put them practically everywhere

make sure it’s visual – use book jacket pics, etc

give your catalog legs:
- create facebook search widgets
- embed search widgets elsewhere, too

social stuff – do it even if you’re not quite ready yet

integration with other databases (federated search)
- some have them

Tagged as: il2008, ILS, next gen, OPAC

7 comments

More MeeboMe Ideas

by David Lee King on December 7, 2007

Wow – there have been lots of comments on the MeeboMe widget. Great! Some other libraries are trying it out – check the comments on my original post and on Jenny Levine’s post titled Mashing on the Library, Part I to find them. Others have been emailing me, asking for details.

Now, let’s take this one further – where else can you embed this thing? For example, Edward had a great idea (left it in my comments). He said “Very cool. I think I might go ahead and add this to our log-in failed page for EzProxy.” Great idea, Edward!

And that made me think… I’ll bet there are other good places to embed something like this. For example, my library’s looking into other places to drop it in the catalog, like on the search results page (idea swiped from Paul Pival).

Think about it like this – where do your patrons get hung up? What stops them… confuses them… makes them click away? Maybe that’s a good place to embed a MeeboMe widget (or something similar). Don’t think “well, I put a link to a Help file there, so that’s good enough.” Come on – do YOU click that Help link? That’s like removing the Information Desk and replacing it with a bin of tipsheets on using the Dewey Decimal System!

Finally, a couple of commenters have mentioned being wary of embedding an IM widget in the catalog because it’s not a 24/7 service. My thoughts:

Well… it CAN be a 24/7 service, if you’re willing to not sleep
I think the focus is off – you’re concerned with what is most likely a very small minority of patrons searching the catalog at 2am. Instead, focus on helping the majority of your patrons… and add text stating your IM hours.
Most 24/7 virtual chat reference services (the only thing I can think of providing 24/7 live help) have people in other libraries answering those 2 am questions… do you really want someone at another library answering a question about YOUR library catalog? Maybe yes, maybe no…

Are you planning to embed a meeboMe widget in your catalog? Leave a comment!

Tagged as: Catalog, ILS, IM, meebo, meebome, OPAC

20 comments

IL2007, Day 3: Building Web 2.0 Native Library Services

by David Lee King on November 1, 2007

Casey Bisson (met him for the first time – nice guy!)

“Libraries are much larger than our books and our OPACs”

Catalog challenges:

usability
findability
remindability

We use Linux daily – it’s the dominant platform of most social web apps

IBM saves over $900,000,000 annually because of LInux

Scriblio.net (used to be his WPOPAC) – very cool. He’s making this easily available to other libraries!

“sites that allow comments value their users”

“Your website is not a marketing tool – it’s a service point.”

Then Casey did a successful live install of Scriblio! Very cool. It’s basically WordPress with some customized widgets and plug-ins (and your catalog records) – took him 11 1/2 minutes, it seemed easy to do.

It’s going to work with Horizon soon. Book jackets come from Amazon.

Be the first to comment

Thoughts on Everything is Miscellaneous, Part 1

by David Lee King on July 3, 2007

I just finished reading David Weinberger’s book, Everything is Miscellaneous (thanks, Brad!). It’s a great read – one that I highly recommend to everyone who reads my blog. You might not agree with everything in the book, but I guarantee the book will make you think.

First things first – Weinberger MUST know some librarians! Throughout the book, he mentions librarians… even some specific ones (ok, he even mentions Gorman and Blog People!). Weinberger also mentions card catalogs, FRBR, faceted searching (in relation to Endeca), DDC, and LCSH. He even quotes Ranganathan! So it’s definitely a “librarian-friendly” book.

Now, on to my main beef with the book. The title of the book, obviously, is Everything is Miscellaneous. And in most of the book, Weinberger tends to discuss first how something is either currently categorized or organized, and then how that organization or categorization has changed with web 2.0 tools and tagging specifically. How has it changed? According to Weinberger, allowing individuals to sort and tag information however they want equates to the world of information turning miscellaneous.

Interestingly enough, I agree with everything Weinberger says… but the term “miscellaneous” bugs me.

Instead of using “miscellaneous,” I’d use “personal.” In fact, I’d change the title of the book to Everything is Personal or Everything is Personally Relevant. Most of the information Weinberger describes as being miscellaneous isn’t actually haphazardly mish-mashed together (definition of Miscellaneous found using Google). Instead, the information, or the metadata at least, has been customized – or personalized – for “me.” Tags, searches, descriptions, customizations – all help to make the information personally relevant to me.

So… it might just be a semantics thing – I dunno. But I don’t see Weinberger’s miscellaneous pile of leaves (read the book – you’ll understand) as miscellaneous. Instead, I see it as opportunity. As something waiting to be discovered by me, tagged and described adequately enough that I can revisit it – which pulls it out of the miscellaneous pile and into my personally relevant, “I place you here” organizational needs.

And if my personal, sorted-through pile helps others (ie., tagging items in flickr), then great!

Update: Part 2 is here…

everythingismiscellaneous

9 comments

SirsiDynix Has a New CEO and CFO

by David Lee King on June 19, 2007

SirsiDynix just appointed Gary Rautenstrauch as New CEO and Douglas Maughan as the CFO. Found via Stephen Abram…

Be the first to comment

OZSDUG Meeting and Demo of Rome

by David Lee King on June 6, 2007

The Gordian Knot blog recently mentioned the OZSDUG (OZarks SirsiDynix Users Group) meeting that took place on June 5th… I attended the meeting – here are my notes:

First up, a SirsiDynix Sales Rep answered a list of pre-prepared questions:

Question – Can we trust SirsiDynix promises? Answer – “No.”
The company that bought Sirsi told them to drop one product, so they could focus on making just one thing (makes sense)
There has been no end of life announced for Horizon
They will support Horizon 7 for the next 4-6 years (see the first point, above…
Claimed Unicorn is a modern ILS
Unicorn/Rome has a very open API – is this true?
Unicorn/Rome is closer to Horizon 8 in terms of functionality
Rome is simply the next release of Unicorn (ie., 3.2) plus whatever they can swipe from Horizon 8
Rome releases 1, 2, and 3 – some functionality will be in 3 rather than in 1 or 2
Rome will be beta testing this summer
They will release a new version once a year
Lots of Horizon functionality won’t be in Rome 1
SAAS – they don’t host it – it’s outsourced to a server farm in Atlanta (makes sense) – Sirsi handles the software upgrades
San Diego Public and Kansas City Public are currently using SAAS
Rome is simply a marketing term – they’re working on renaming it

Then another sales rep did a demo of Unicorn EPS:

It’s ugly (my opinion!)
It does (finally) have built in RSS feeds on searches (yippie!)
Includes federated search as part of the base package, which also works with the RSS feeds (yippie!)
Don’t have to subscribe to Rooms to get RSS and the federated search portion – both are part of the base package
Sirsi updates Rooms – not the customer! That seems odd
Claimed that Sirsi spent lots of time designing the default Rooms look – then the speaker spent a lot of time pointing out the three-column design and explained the eye-tracking F thing…
However (my opinion) the base package is extremely ugly. It looks like it was made in 1999 rather than in 2007. Sirsi could certainly spend some time and money doing little itty bitty visual tweaks to make the customer web-based piece look at least normal, if not truly modern – just hire or contract with a designer!
One thing that really amazed me – on the default product in the list of results, do they highlight the title of the book and put the title at the top of the record? No… instead, they put the call number up at the top, in bold and in a larger font. That doesn’t seem customer-friendly to me.
This guy for some reason came off as being insincere – after the Sirsi people left, a question was asked “did anyone like [sales dude]?” Almost everyone said “no!” pretty loudly (which surprised me)! I think that was because of his presentation style (he was trying to be funny, but it came out being more edgy/sarcastic) – again, my take!

Finally, the Sales Director, East spoke about future directions and answered a few questions:

I asked a question – with the SAAS service, do you have to look like you’re hosted at Sirsi (most hosted sites I’ve seen have a sirsi.net/libraryname URL)? They didn’t know, but called in the question (which was cool – thanks!), and yes – you can use whatever domain name/URL you want to…
They’re working on a web staff client – there will be a limited release later this year
He admitted to swiping slides from Abrams…
Working on a faceted and visual search – I think they showed screenshots of a mock-up. It looks to be much the same as Aquabrowser, Endeca, or that new Worldcat thing that’s out
text messaging holds and overdues – this functionality was in Horizon 8. It is “in queue” for Rome (didn’t say which version)
Someone made the comment that what we see when Stephen Abram speaks or when we listen to the SirsiDynix Institute seminars and what we see when we actually see a SirsiDynix product or talk to a sales rep seem to be two very different things. To that, the Sales Director said (my summary here): we walk a fine line with Abrams and with the SirsiDynix Institute – we don’t want it to appear like we actually do all the stuff that Abrams says (apparently because he speaks at lots of non-Sirsi things??? – just what the rep said…), or what the Institute teaches. I didn’t like the separation he put between what appears to libraryland as the
voice of the company and the actual product – if the voice and the
product say two different things, well… that’s not good!
And to be fair, he DID say that Abrams has a list of stuff that HAS to be in Rome for it to be successful (so that’s something, at least). But he did NOT say that SirsiDynix was working to include that list in Rome. And

So – to sum up… we heard:

don’t trust Sirsi
they made us drop horizon
we promise to continue to support horizon (see #1)
Showed us what they consider to be a modern ILS (Rome/Unicorn)… the audience didn’t agree (gleaned from the discussion after the Sirsi reps left)
When Abrams says something cool, or when you hear something neat about an ILS system at the SirsiDynix Institute, don’t expect it to appear in an actual Sirsi product.

12 comments

← Previous Entries

davidleeking: You’re very kind – thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt! Let’s see –...
Angela Katterhagen: I guess it depends on the way you look at it. (David, I’m guessing your cup of java was...
Burnsy1217: I actually love these ads – very clever and hitting the right market. Way to go Milwaukee Public...
Sandeepjain549: Good efforts. All the best for future posts. I have bookmarked you. Well done. I read and like this...
Rachel: You can’t read too much into this or take it personally, I think that’s when it might start to...