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High costs of the ILS 2007 January 27

I though that the libraries that I have worked at paid a lot for their Integrated Library System (ILS), however, it may not be as bad as some. I was at a meeting that was discussing ILS issues yesterday and someone from a small college said that their ILS costs them over 40% of the total library budget. She even clarified the total library budget part. I’m assuming she is not including staffing, but still, that is a big chunk of change. I guess I’m glad I’m not dealing with that at a very small institution. These are the places that don’t have the knowledge/funding to hire someone to support their own system, so they are kind of stuck. Even if they went to a different vendor, the prices probably wouldn’t go down much and the staff will all need to be retrained to the new software. With academic libraries increasingly relying on resources outside of the ILS, I’m not sure how sustainable this model will be in the long term. Sure, bigger Universities can support their own ILS, but small locations may be forced to find partners or abandon the full-featured ILS altogether sometime down the road.

Presenting in Africa 2007 January 26

I usually don’t get too excited about being accepted to present at a conference. Sure, I’m usually happy and it feels good, but I’m really excited about my most recent acceptance letter. I have been accepted to speak at a IFLA 2007 SATELLITE PRE-CONFERENCE in Dakar, Sénégal. The pre-conference, “Managing technologies and library automated systems in developing countries: open source VS commercial options,” looks to have a number of interesting papers being presented about using Open Source in libraries located in developing countries. My paper is titled “An open source, open access journal database appliance : a proposal.” The program hasn’t yet been put on the Web, but the call for papers can be found at http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla73/satellite10call-en.htm.

Chili Bowl, Tulsa OK, Jan. 10-13, 2007 2007 January 19

I went to my first few races of 2007 in Tulsa OK. This was my annual trip to the Chili Bowl. As usual it was a great race. Maybe a little less exciting then in years past but still a wonderful race and one everyone should get to at least once. The high-lite for the Easrt Coast racers was Steve Buckwater qualifying for the A-main for the 3′rd year in a row, finishing 11′th. Not bad considering there was over 280 entries. The low-light, so to speak was a nasty looking flip on one of the prelim nights by Ray Bull. His car was destroyed, but luckily he was OK. You can read more about it at www.chilibowl.com.

My stats for 2007:

Races: 4
Tracks: 1
States: 1

NJ Library BarCamp? 2007 January 6

Michael J. Giarlo. has proposed a New Jersey BarCamp for Library Geeks in his Technosophia blog. His plan is based on a model of a group in D.C. and sounds very interesting. His reasons for wanting to start a NJ Library BarCamp include:

Why BarCamp? Don’t we have enough meetings and symposiums? Sure, we’re all spread thin. Our niche would be to bring together the TAG-style dog & pony shows with code sprints and other collaborative development a la the Access Hackfest. We’re looking for a group that will be innovative, collegial, social, practical, and – not to be corny, but – fun-loving.

I plan on attending this is Michael gets it off the ground. If you are interested in more details, see the post about it on his blog and let Michael know.

Vista Equity Partnes buys SirsiDynix 2007 January 2

I wrote previously that Vista Equity Partners was going to invest in SirsiDynix. The deal was officially announced on December 27. Well, it seems that Vista is doing more than investing, it is purchasing SirsiDynix. What well this mean, I’m not sure but Vista is saying that it won’t change much with SirsiDynix. Personally, I think that wouldn’t be a good move for customers of SirsiDynix. While SirsiDynix is a market leader in the public library market (and is the leader or near the top in some other library markets), their flagship Integrated Library Systems (ILS) product (as with all proprietary ILS products) can use a good deal of work. Library Journal picked up on Dan Scott’s blog post and is also speculating that the big difference customers might see is higher costs. I guess if that happens – especially without an improved product – maybe more libraries will seriously begin to consider Open Source solutions such as Evergreen and Koha.

Happy New Year! 2007 January 1

I hope everyone has a great 2007!