By David DormanAmerican Libraries Columnist
ddorma@ltnet.ltls.org
By David Dorman
American Libraries Columnist
ddorma@ltnet.ltls.org
Library consultant for the Lincoln Trail Libraries System in Champaign, Illinois.
Column for August 2002
If I had any doubt that cataloging theory could make a real difference for the library patron, it was dispelled at this year’s ALA Annual Conference. Seymour Lubetsky—retired Library of Congress cataloger, one of the guiding lights of the second edition of Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, and the foremost theoretician of cataloging in the 20th century—was awarded an honorary ALA membership, the Association’s highest honor, at the Opening General Session. A videotape of this still cogent 104-year-old speaking on why cataloging matters was a tour de force. He used a real-life example of a Navy shipyard not being able to locate the right brackets because the naming conventions in use were not adequate for making the necessary distinctions and relationships among the brackets.
Two days later on the exhibit floor I witnessed Lubetsky’s pioneering ideas in action at the VTLS booth. The company was demonstrating its implementation of International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’s (IFLA) newest cataloging standard, FRBR, affectionately known as “furber,” but which really stands for Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. Reading this 1998 standard is tough going (which, if you are up to it, can be found online), but seeing it in action is a real pleasure.
FRBR extends Lubetsky’s idea of the Work as a basic unit of cataloging. The standard defines three bibliographic levels: Work, Expression, and Manifestation, each one of which can have its own MARC record. Users of large catalogs who wish to place holds or ILL requests for specific titles have for years been handicapped by the implementation of the unit record concept, whereby every different edition of a work gets its own MARC record, even if the content and format of the information contained in the items represented by all those separate records is virtually identical. Under FRBR, all those records, now called Manifestations, still exist, but they are linked to a higher level MARC record—the Expression.
In the VTLS demonstration of how FRBR works, I was able to place a hold on the Expression level record of Beau Geste by P. C. Wren, rather than being forced to choose among a half-dozen different editions, each of which represented the exact same novel. Music librarians in particular are going to think they’ve died and gone to music metadata heaven when they see how FRBR can organize musical works.
VTLS definitely has a leg up on the other ILS vendors in FRBR implementation. Not only did I not see any other ILS FRBR implementation, I did not even hear the usual hype that always precedes actual implementation. FRBR, with its guidelines for creating MARC records on the Expression and Work levels, is a long-overdue and dramatic improvement in OPAC functionality.
Product differentiation seems to be increasing in the ILS market. Endeavor has announced a partnership with Blackboard, a company that provides a suite of Web-based software products that provide “e-Education Infrastructure” for education providers, whereby a user of Blackboard will be able to access Endeavor’s LinkFinderPlus. Endeavor is also partnering with Lexis/Nexis for an XML gateway from within Endeavor software that will access specific Lexis/Nexis databases. Epixtech and PTFS inked a deal to enable Epixtech to integrate PTFS’ Archival-Ware into Epixtech’s new iPAC front end to allow simultaneous searching of digital documents and library holdings. The new product will be called DigitaLink. What strange bedfellows library automation makes! Last year PTFS became a distributor of Ex Libris’s products to federal government agencies and DC-area special libraries.
Ex Libris was highlighting its success in selling its SFX and MetaLib products to libraries that use competitors’ ILS products. I got the distinct impression they especially enjoyed pointing out Voyager users who opted for SFX and MetaLib rather than ENcompass with LinkFinderPlus. Of the 200 libraries that have purchased SFX and MetaLib, only about 50% are Aleph500 users.
Historically the regional/statewide union catalog market has been dominated by Auto-Graphics, with Innovative Interfaces making recent inroads. Ex Libris’ recent contract with the North Suburban Library System in Illinois for a union catalog for the system’s 187 libraries may be a harbinger that success in the union catalog market is shifting from specialized vendors such as Auto-Graphics to large-system ILS vendors.
Since its purchase of DRA, Sirsi has focused on migrating all DRA customers to Unicorn, deploying a common front end for all four of the company’s ILS products—Unicorn, DRA Classic, Inlex, and MultiLIS. The company’s goal is to turn disaffected DRA customers into loyal Unicorn users in what is a very competitive market. And Sirsi continues to look for technology and content partners: It just signed a deal with ScanSoft to give Unicorn text-to-speech capability, and the company is reselling two PC-management software products: Comprise and EnvisionWare.
After selling Millennium Access Plus portal software to over 25 libraries, Innovative Interfaces has now made it a standalone product. The company has also embarked on a project to develop a product it is calling Electronic Resource Management, which will “enable libraries to keep track of their e-journal licensing and purchasing details using a single interface . . . and eliminating the need to maintain separate databases.” Sounds like progress to me. Now if only one of the vendors would begin integrating transaction counts of print resources with those of e-resources. (Hey, I’m allowed to dream.)
VTLS is putting its focus on growing its market share in the U.S. While the company has had respectable sales abroad, it has not fared well in new sales in North America. For whatever reason, the Virtua system has not had the sales in North America that would be expected from the sophistication of its software, and the company is very much aware it has an unmet marketing challenge. In addition to FRBR, the company offered an eye-catching “system in a box,” consisting of a server the size of a paperback book that can be up and running at the press of a button. The company claims the little box has enough storage capacity to handle the combined libraries of Virginia Tech and the National Library of Switzerland.
In an interesting contrast, Veicon, a first-time ALA exhibitor with thin-client products and services, was showing a portable thin client that could store virtually nothing, but could access any ILS data or perform any function wirelessly and without a physical keyboard. Together these two gadgets could be a portable, wireless virtual library. Have library system, will travel.
Gaylord’s booth was showing off its recent ability to integrate the Polaris ILS with LSSI’s Virtual Reference Toolkit. This could be the beginning of a trend. TLC is still grappling with how to make a success out of its purchase of Carl. The company has created a team that is auditing Carl installations to assess in detail the strengths and weaknesses of the software. In the meantime, TLC has also begun to market the Surpass library-management system to small single-site installations. Surpass has been around for about 15 years under various names and has about 1,000 customers, mostly located on the East Coast.
One of the clearest examples of how ILS vendors are diverging in their development of new capabilities is represented by BiblioMondo’s recent $8-million contract with the National Library of Quebec. The BiblioMondo system will be expected to mine library data to perform such tasks as scheduling the circ desk based on circulation patterns on specific days of the week.
One thing I did not see in an ILS booth was a well-developed XML editing tool. Before heading off to Atlanta I received a description of the ALOHA product from Michael Magee at the University of Calgary, where ALOHA was developed: “ALOHA was designed to allow you to drag and drop an object onto its drop pad and choose the XML schema you want to use to create the metadata record, after which ALOHA will automatically extract as much metadata out of the object as possible. Once the record is created you can then begin to populate all the non-automated labels that are left over. The schema will only allow you to create a valid metadata record because it enforces all the rules defined in the schema you select. ALOHA is available as freeware to libraries in Alberta.” Nothing I saw at the exhibits even came close to the functionality of ALOHA. I think the ILS vendors have their work cut out for them with regard to XML-based cataloging tools.
Outside of the exhibit hall I met up with Lynn Kellar, OCLC’s director of Database and Offline Products Division, who told me she had tried to interest the ILS vendors in standardizing on an all-inclusive XML schema that would contain all possible data elements used by any descriptive metadata standard. Any particular metadata standard or template could then be expressed as a particular XSL style sheet of the inclusive standard schema. Sounded like a great idea to me, one that would save the vendors a lot of development work and would promote metadata interoperability among libraries. But Lynn had no takers. Whatever else the ILS vendors are doing, they are not focusing on metadata creation tools and standardization.
Although no one has yet figured out how best to structure the resource-discovery experience for the researcher who wants to scour the entire digital world and retrieve the best nuggets of information with one easy search, that doesn’t stop a lot of vendors from trying. Every ILS vendor and a host of specialized D2D (discovery to delivery) vendors were displaying very different products, each of which purported to offer a single user interface to resource discovery. I saw products from Auto-Graphics, Divine, Fretwell-Downing, MuseGlobal and WebFeat in addition to the ILS vendors’ products. While there are no clear winners in this very young market, Ex Libris and Fretwell-Downing appeared to me to be the current front-runners in terms of sales.
The dark horse entrant is OCLC, which is rapidly evolving FirstSearch to function as a single interface to all information resources without a lot of fanfare. It appears that the information aggregators such as EBSCO, Gale, Bell and Howell, and OVID are each doing their best to be in the resource-linking loop, but they are no longer vying for ascendency in the battle to determine who gets to be your library’s primary information portal. The D2D information portal is on its way to becoming a core product for the world’s libraries.
Virtual Reference systems are booming. LSSI, still the market leader with close to a thousand libraries using its software, is pursuing alliances with ILS vendors—no doubt as one response to the forthcoming entry of OCLC’s QuestionPoint service, which will be based on Convey software. Much more than just a software package, QuestionPoint is a cooperative project involving LC and many other participants that seeks to distribute questions to the most appropriate libraries. 24x7 Reference, another not-for-profit purveyor of virtual reference software, also offers 24-hour online reference service for the times when no one is available at the patron’s own library. The company has netted over 300 customers to date. 24x7 offers libraries a two-month trial free of charge.
Docutek Information Systems is on the heels of the market leaders, having sold its Virtual Reference Librarian software to over 50 academic libraries. The company released its second version in April and has the lowest entry-level pricing I have seen, charging a $2,000 one-time installation fee and $2,000 annually for up to five simultaneous reference librarian “seats.”
There are two new entrants into the virtual reference market: Divine and Digi-Net Technologies made their conference debuts. Divine, which recently purchased e-share, offers a product based on e-share’s NetAgent software. A number of very large libraries have been using NetAgent even before it was adapted to libraries by Divine. Digi-Net, which sells customer-support software, has modified it for library virtual reference and has come out with a product called eLibrarian. The cost is $250 per month per seat if the service is hosted by Digi-Net, or $5,000 for a one-time purchase plus an optional $500 maintenance fee per year for the second and subsequent years.
Civic Technologies was on one end of the floor demonstrating recent enhancements to its GIS LibraryDecision software, where Marc Futterman, the company’s CEO, said there was a great deal of consortial interest in the product. Halfway across the hall (only about a five-minute walk) was Computers by Design, with its family of Cybrary products, one of which, CybraryView, is a geographic information system for libraries. (Shortly after the conference, the company changed the name of the product to The Town.) Starting at under $5,000 for the basic product, it seemed to be in the same price range as LibraryDecision. The Civic Technologies product is based on ESRI’s ARC software, whereas the Computers by Design product uses in-house technology. Both companies said they would be revising their pricing. I also learned at the Decision by Design booth that all of the company’s Cybrary products are given out free to accredited library schools.
Antarcti.ca was showing its Visualnet software, which is in use by the National Library of Medicine. Starting at $20,000 per year or $2,000 per month for a single-server license, this visualization searching software is for the big guys only.
Ex-Libris—with the University of Michigan/Ann Arbor libraries, for the Aleph 500 system to replace a Notis system for the management of the library’s 7-million volume collection; with the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England, for an Aleph 500 system, MetaLib, and SFX, to replace a Geac Advance system; with the Bank of Italy for an Aleph 500 system to replace Biblnew and Fulcrum IR systems; and with the Dutch National Bank for Aleph 500 to replace a Dobis/Libis system.
Endeavor Information Systems—with the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland, for a Voyager system to replace a VTLS Classic system, to manage the library’s 3.5-million-item collection; with the State Library of Queensland, located in Brisbane, Australia, for a Voyager system to replace the library’s in-house system; and with the Alberta Law Society Libraries for a Voyager system to replace a VTLS system in the society’s 56 libraries located throughout Alberta, Canada. The Law Society has its headquarters in Edmonton.
Innovative Interfaces Incorporated—with the Helsinki Metropolitan Libraries in Finland, for a Millennium system for the library system’s four city libraries and 92 branches, to replace a Geac Plus system; with the Missouri River Regional Library in Jefferson City, Missouri, for a Millennium system to replace a DRA Classic system; and with the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia for a Millennium system, the library’s first ILS.
Sirsi—with the Oxnard (Calif.) Public Library for a Unicorn system, iBistro Electronic Library and the Hyperion Digital Media Archive system, to replace a Dynix system; with the Whittier (Calif.) Public Library for Unicorn and iBistro to replace a Dynix system; with Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for a Link system and an iLink Online Scholar’s Portal to replace a DRA system; with the South Pasadena (Calif.) Public Library for Unicorn and iBistro to replace an Inlex system; with the Ontario Library Consortium, a 19-member system in southern Ontario, Canada, for a Unicorn system and iBistro to replace the consortium’s MultiLIS system; and with Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, for the Link system and the iLink Online Scholar Portal, for itself and its 11 consortial partners, to replace a Sirsi MultiLIS system.
Epixtech—with Murray State University, Kentucky, for a Horizon system to replace the library’s Endeavor Voyager system. The purchase was financed by a $98,000 grant from Lana Porter, the soon-to-be-retiring president and CEO of Epixtech.
Gaylord Information Systems—with the Maury County (Tenn.) Public Library in Columbia, for a Polaris system, the library’s first ILS; and with the Salem (Ohio) Public Library for a Polaris system to replace the library’s Gaylord Galaxy system.
Brodart Automation—with the Chattahoochee Valley Regional Library System in Columbus, Georgia, for DartClix, a subscription service providing MARC-formatted catalog records for Web sites.