Technically Speaking
 By Andrew K. Pace
American Libraries Columnist
Head of information technology,
North Carolina State University Libraries,
Raleigh
andrew_pace@ncsu.edu
August 2007
The Hill Was Alive . . .
. . . with the sound of librarians
My very first ALA was 11 years ago in New York City. I was both a newly minted librarian and a newlywed. My wife Sharon accompanied me to the Big Apple, not to see the organized chaos that is Annual Conference, but because Julie Andrews was performing on Broadway. It was her first time seeing Andrews and I just happened to get my first job as a librarian at that conference. This year we were back at ALA together and Julie Andrews was there, too.
Bigger and better
This was the largest ALA ever, with over 28,000 in attendance. The conference felt big and busy, but not crowded and overwhelming. And this was the first year since I began writing this exhibit floor review for Annual and Midwinter in 2004 that I heard no complaints from vendors. Not to say there weren’t any, but I almost always hear grumblings about low traffic, bad booth placement, etc. This time, everyone seemed pleased. Happy people in Washington, D.C.—go figure.
There was much less emphasis this year on radically new products and services. The feel was much more about making existing things bigger and better, whether through increased development efforts, better public relations and marketing, or the smoothing of edges around crookedly joined companies.
Bowker’s acquisition of Medialab Solutions (makers of AquaBrowser) was a bit of a surprise. Not only does the company with a lot of con-tent now own a company with its own interface, but the fact that Bowker is owned by Cambridge Information Group could also make things interesting: CSA, ProQuest, Bowker, Medialab, and Serials Solutions all under one umbrella.
Serials Solutions has been working hard to define the automation space for electronic resource management. First, the firm launched “ERAMS” (Electronic Resources Access and Management Services) at erams.org as a space for librarians to discuss and gather information. Its own marketing campaign is dubbed Serials Solutions 360—including link, search, MARC updates, Resource Manager, and Access and Management Services. Regardless of whether one thinks this provides a 360-degree view of library resource management, giving the products and services a platform on which they can be judged and discussed is a nice contribution.
And you certainly cannot talk about things getting bigger without mentioning OCLC. The library cooperative just received a $12.6-million grant to improve its WebJunction service. In addition, the merger with RLG has increased WorldCat holdings substantially; of particular emphasis at the OCLC President’s luncheon (unfortunately, held as far away from the Washington Convention Center as could have been possible) was the internationalization of OCLC—its holdings, its customers, its management team, and its Members Council president (a Canadian, but hey, it’s a start).
Despite its new international reach, OCLC is still keen to make WorldCat your cat—a customized view of the union database is now available as WorldCat Local. High-profile partners such as the University of California and the University of Washington, as well as the inclusion of several million article citations, makes WorldCat Local a different but competitive product in the new online catalog market space.
Convenience is key
Another theme I noticed on the floor was customer convenience. This has been a goal since Ranganathan told us to save the time of the reader, but it is becoming more and more apparent in our interfaces and hardware design.
I am especially impressed with what I keep seeing in patron self-service. We’ve gone from clunky-looking, nearly unapproachable contraptions to small, efficient, and inviting self-service kiosks. The hardware from Comprise Technologies resembles serious point-of-sale equipment for circulation desk staff, and the Automated Payment Machine (APM) has an intuitive touch-screen display.
Tech Logic has a cool new portable RFID tagging station that simplifies the scanning and tagging of collections. EnvisionWare continues to extend its reach through important partnerships and new technologies. I had a nice demo of its Windows Mobile handheld RFID device, running on a Dell Axim X51. The handheld circulation device can also be retrofitted for barcodes.
Open, says me
It’s been about a decade since open source software began being seriously discussed as an alternative for libraries. That decade has produced fanatics, skeptics, and everything in between. But only lately has “open source vendor” entered the lexicon.
This has resparked decade-old discussions about the cost of “free,” the compelling nature of open systems architecture, and the virtue of freedom in working with open source systems.
Not to miss such an opportunity, service providers (an ironic moniker given that it is the one that OCLC prefers over “vendor”) have emerged to support the costly aspects of software that offers its owners more freedom. Index Data and LibLime have been around for a while now, and have been mentioned frequently in this column and on my Hectic Pace blog. Equinox, a company sprung from the successful Georgia PINES Evergreen software, joined the fray just recently. Care Affiliates was new on the exhibit floor this year. Headed by Carl Grant and Lou Leuzzi, no strangers to the ILS industry, Care is teaming up with Index Data as a technology partner, and they even shared a booth with them and LibLime.
I implied last year that Evergreen would not get real traction until it scored its second customer. Well, here comes the traction: The public libraries in British Columbia have announced a phased implementation of the Evergreen ILS. In another interesting move, PALINET—the regional services network for Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia—has made an agreement with LibLime for discounted support for the Koha open source ILS. Crawford
County (Pa.) Federated Library System chose LibLime in 2006 to support its new Koha ZOOM system.
The University of Rochester (N.Y.) Libraries open source project, XC, is also continuing (disclosure: I am a member of the advisory board), and the Mellon Foundation has reportedly approached Evergreen via the Georgia Public Library System. It was reported at the Library and Information Technology Association’s Open ILS program that a collaboration between PINES and Rochester could be in the cards. If these open source providers could get the kind of grant funding that even OCLC can get, things could get really interesting.
Unlike my first ALA conference, there was no new job for me this time. But we did get to see Julie Andrews up close and personal at the D.C. Public Library’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, where she and her daughter read from their new book. Sorry, exhibitors, the vendor floor may have been hopping, but it’s pretty much downhill after seeing Mary Poppins. Unlike most library software, she is practically perfect in every way.
Announcements
SirsiDynix announced the name of its new system, formerly code-named Rome. The new ILS, which is promised to combine the best features of Unicorn and Horizon, will be called Symphony.
XRefer, the online reference source aggregator, has changed its name to Credo Reference.
Acquisition
EBSCO has acquired two of ABC-CLIO’s databases, Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life, and will also distribute ABC-CLIO”s e-book collection, History Reference Online.
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