Marshall Breeding released his “Perceptions 2007: An International Survey of Library Automation” report. While it is interesting to look at the numbers, I think anyone needs to take the comparisons with a grain of salt (if that). The attitudes, cultures, and expectations between the user base of these different systems can be quite different. Also, the maintenance fees paid can be quite different. It is true, as Breeding points out that “Some companies and products garner higher levels of satisfaction from the libraries that use them than others.” However, if I am going to spend $75,000 car, it better be fast, stylish and have a lot of bells and whistles or I wouldn’t be satisfied. If I spent $15,000 I’d expect nothing more than reliable transportation. As Ross Singer pointed out in the #code4lib channel “the Porsche Cayenne and the Honda Element should never be confused.” Of course, I’m not sure that any ILS comes close to being a Porsche, at least not anything other than a 15 year old rusted one with a Maaco paint job,
One thing I thought was interesting is the respondents that use Voyager were more likely then users of any other system to “consider implementing an open source ILS.” While an initial reaction might be to think this number is highly an artifact of the recent sale of Endeavor and the company being folded into Ex Libris, I think it might even more reflect the culture of the Voyager community to “hack” additional features onto Voyager, which lends itself to such efforts rather well compared to other ILSs (or so I here). Uncertainty in the market place obviously has an influence as well, but I think there is more to the story than that.
