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Freedom: A Year in Review
Head of Information Technology Column for December 2006 Every time I read a “year in review” roundup, it simply reminds me how quickly the preceding year has gone by, and the past year’s worth of news from the library automation world is no exception. By the end of this year, I will have received several hundred e-mails announcing everything from a minor system migration to a major multimillion-dollar corporate acquisition. The Library Technology Guides website is on pace, so to speak, to include over 5,000 press releases in its database for 2006 alone. How do I wrap up 2006 in 800 words or less? I thought I would hit on a theme for the year: freedom. Freedom from restrictive systems, freedom from the restraint of formats, as well as the freedom that empowers both librarians and their patrons. Empowerment surge John Blyberg of Ann Arbor Public Library actually kicked off a lot of this year’s discussion in late 2005 with his ILS Customer Bill of Rights (www.blyberg.net/2005/11/20/ils-customerbill-of-rights/). In it he writes about database access, standards, freedom of hardware, and security—four simple demands that would empower librarians who want something new and different from their systems. Other libraries (like my own at North Carolina State University, the 252 public libraries belonging to Georgia PINES, and dozens of AquaBrowser customers) have attempted to reinvent the front end of the catalog, if not the entire ILS. Webservice evangelists like Paul Miller at Talis and many of the 2.0 crowd have convinced their colleagues that numerous services can be layered on top of disparate and even legacy systems. Freedom from off-the-shelf technology Library vendors took notice; in fact, many of them were among the crowd that was innovating and complaining. Empowerment is a great motivator, but not only for those seeking it. Library vendors responded in kind. Some opened their systems a little bit, some a lot. But mostly, they began to develop the sorts of applications that libraries wanted to build themselves. Vendors do this not only because it is profitable, but because they know that for every library that hacks or builds something truly innovative, there are several dozen more that want to buy the same thing. Ex Libris sought partners in the University of Minnesota and Vanderbilt University to build Primo; Innovative Interfaces just announced 13 libraries that will be helping to build Encore. These types of partnerships are becoming more prevalent as the era of codevelopment (rather than codependence) is already at hand: Librarians tell vendors what we want rather than vendors spending so much effort convincing us of what we need. Freedom of choice In his latest e-newsletter, Adler lauds new reading devices using e-ink, such as the Sony Reader, but still laments the slow embrace of e-book devices and the evolutionary growth of the market. “Changing people’s habits is like turning a battleship in a narrow channel. It takes very brave and imaginative people to take the risk of effecting change.” Adler is one of those brave people. (Would that publishers were as brave as authors.) Mass digitization, the Open Content Alliance, and the Google Books Library Project are also brave endeavors that have great potential to change how people discover, preserve, and consume books. Find more, search less The votes are not yet in on whether graphical search, faceted search, or clustering will win the day. The great thing is that none of these options is mutually exclusive as long as the trend toward building tools with 21stcentury technologies continues. The bar has been raised, and libraries and vendors are trying to get over it rather than only glancing up at it or simply passing underneath. With freedom comes a lot of responsibility. It’s comforting to know that our profession is a brave one. Now we must be courageous enough to embrace ambiguity. Announcements
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