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Everything Was Bigger—Except the News

Andrew Pace
By Andrew K. Pace
American Libraries Columnist
andrew_pace@ncsu.edu

Head of Systems, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh.

Column for March 2006

Duane Sharp of Thomson Scientific

Duane Sharp of Thomson Scientific corrals Heleni Pedersoli
of the University of Maryland in College Park at ALA's
Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio.

Everything is bigger in Texas—except, it seems, for the library automation news. The floor at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio seemed big and busy, and all the vendor wares that conference attendees are used to seeing were in play. But the bigness of the space seemed to turn the usual buzz into whispers, and even what seemed like major announcements and product releases were swallowed up in the wide-open conference center hallways that could easily have doubled for football fields.

So I had to settle for what seemed like business as usual this year. Still, there were some things worth noting and some new trends to spot.

Listless ILS-ness

For those who follow the library automation marketplace, Midwinter almost always starts with the tradition of the RMG panel, which features a slew of library automation CEOs looking dapper and trying to display sparks of innovation and distinction without revealing their business plans to the competitors sitting next to them. This year’s panel, hosted by panel founder Rob McGee, included Paul Cope, Auto-Graphics; Roland Dietz, Endeavor; Matti Shem Tov, Ex Libris; Eric van Lubeek, Geac; Ronald Brisebois, Isacsoft; Jerry Kline, Innovative Interfaces; Bill Schickling, Polaris; Pat Sommers, SirsiDynix; Annette Murphy, TLC; and Vinod Chachra, VTLS.

In a theater built to hold several hundred, only about 70 people turned out—most of them in the employ of panelists. If they came looking for gems from the competition or slip-ups from their own bosses, they were sorely disappointed. It can be daunting to be the sixth panelist to attempt a nondisclosing answer to a question about which few in the audience were interested (e.g., “What are your plans for marketing the ILS in China?”).

If the legacy ILS has become unexciting to Libraryland, then talking about it for three hours is a battle for enlightenment. My hat is off to the intrepid company leaders who looked only slightly less bored than I am sure they were. And actually, my hat is still off to Rob McGee for keeping the panel going for so long. This year, things just fell a little flat. Like Texas, that room was just too big.

Library what?

Despite the lack of buzz on the vendor floor, there were some buzzwords that vendors and libraries could both latch onto and apply to their markets. "Library 2.0" made the rounds as an extension of last year’s “Web 2.0.” Put simply, the 2.0 moniker denotes a next generation of web technology. Here are a few simplistic 2.0 juxtapositions (for which I will probably incur the wrath of technology mavens): Britannica Online is Web 1.0, Wikipedia is 2.0; Mapquest is 1.0, the new interactive Google and Yahoo maps are 2.0. More than just new applications, Web 2.0 connotes a platform that improves with usage and personal interaction. For instance, taxonomies are very 1.0; folksonomies—the individual tagging and creation of metadata—is très 2.0.

Many librarians have branded the Web 2.0 concept as Library 2.0. As with most technology, libraries don’t embrace something until they can find a use for it. A few years ago, you would have thought that libraries had invented online chat for all the hype that virtual reference created. Some have gone so far as to suggest that anything new in libraries is Library 2.0 and everything old is anti-2.0. I bristle at this “if you ain’t fer it yer agin’ it” mentality.

I’ll take mine version-less

I find more solace in libraries and vendors just doing new technology. And I am excited by what seems like true innovation going on among both vendors and libraries. Proponents would call it Library 2.0. I’d just say it’s about time.

Ex Libris has jumped onto the search-and-retrieval bandwagon feet first with a new portal (for lack of a better label) called Primo, which attempts to bring together a new and improved public face to the catalog, along with retrieval methods for metasearch, digital collections, and harvested repositories of metadata. Designed so that components can exist in other interfaces (even nonlibrary ones), Primo is following a trend to provide information to users where they are, not only where the library is. SirsiDynix also continues to make similar improvements to its Rooms interface, which may have been a little ahead of its time conceptually. Now that the technology is catching up, search and retrieval in library systems can only improve.

With new general-manager leadership from Jane Burke, Serials Solutions continues to impress as one of the more nimble hosted solutions for library technology; it offers metasearch, ERM, A–Z journal lists, and more. Serials Solutions has partnered with web search company Vivisimo to offer metadata clustering of retrieval sets in its Central Search software. Providing context on the fly is a tremendous leap forward for metasearch. Swets’ SwetsWise Searcher also uses the Vivisimo clustering technology, and others are sure to follow.

Redesigning the public interface is also happening for public libraries, thanks to companies such as Polaris, whose new 3.3 version of its online catalog is built upon the AJAX technology suite. Not a single technology, AJAX incorporates synchronous client-server activity through the use of Javascript and XML. The new system also incorporates credit card–payment capabilities and RSS feeds. Under its longtime company leader and new CEO Paul Cope, Auto-Graphics has retooled AGent Verso as a full-fledged ILS solution, including metasearch, digital-collection, and resource-sharing applications.

Excitement after the storm

At last year’s RMG panel (AL, Mar. 2005, p. 51), I accused (generally) the CEOs of ILS companies of no longer innovating. To a great extent, libraries have picked up that mantle themselves, no longer content to wait for technology to come from vendors. Nevertheless, vendors seem to have heard Libraryland’s challenge to innovate, which has been issued by many others besides me. Business as usual can often mean more good for libraries than the buzz and rumors created by big mergers and hyperbolic press releases.

I’m really looking forward to ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans. I am also confident that search will be one of the big technology themes. After being briefly distracted a few years ago by concepts such as learning objects, knowledge management, and content management systems, library automation specialists are finding that new technologies will enable them to take a step back and solve the simple things—like search and retrieval. The cart is back behind the horse. It’s business as usual, and business is about to get good.

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