Entries from November 2009 ↓

Not much changed this past wekend in my college football top 10. Here it is:

1) TCU (11-0) (prev: 1) Beat Wyoming on the road 45-10. Fellow undefeated team, Texas, beat Wyoming 41-10 earlier this season. I don’t know how much you can compare scores, but still I know if TCU beat Wyoming by less than Texas the Big Conference Supporters would have a field day with it.

2) Cincinnati 10-0 (prev: 2) Had an off week before playing Illinois this coming weekend.

3) Boise State 8-0 (prev: 3) Oregon’s loss to Stanford makes Boise’s biggest win not look as good, but still who did Texas, Florida, or Alabama beat out of conference that was better?

4) Texas 11-0 (prev: 4 ) Beat a one in-conference win Kansas State.

5) Alabama 11-0 (prev: 5) Beat the Chattanooga Mocs? If Florida didn’t play an equivelent cupcake, I’d move Alabama down a spot

6) Florida 11-0 (prev: 6) The SEC once again proves it can frost cupcakes but most of their top teams don’t have the guts top play tough out of region, out of conference games

7) Georgia Tech 10-1 (prev: 7) The Rambling Wreck had an off week before this weeks out-of-conference, in-state game against Georgia.

8 ) Pittsburgh 9-1 (prev: 8 ) The Panthers rested up this past week in preparation for the Backyard Brawl with West Virgina.

9) Ohio State 9-2 (prev: 10) Although Ohio State’s loss to Southern Cal is not looking so good anymore, I’m still giving them some credit for at least scheduling one tough out of conference game and thus they are my top 2 loss team.

10) Oregon 8-2 (prev 9) Just pulled out the win this past week in Arizona and the Stanford loss doesn’t look so good after Stanford lost to Cal this week. This drops Oregon to #10.

On November 16′th the Kuali Foundation announced that a group of academic libraries are partnering to create the Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE) (pronounced Oh-LAY). Although I knew this announcement like this was coming, I find it welcome news. While I am a strong supporter of Evergreen and Koha Open Source integrated library systems (ILS), I think the OLE Project will bring something new to the table that neither of these other two projects currently do. Koha and Evergreen, while successful, are more replacements for existing ILSs such as those currently offered by SirsiDynix, III, and Ex Libris. Depending on your point of view, these may be better options than the existing proprietary ILS vendors offerings, or they may be more limited. However, even if one takes the position that they are better, offer more return on investment, and are a better fit for the philosophy of libraries, they still are not breakthroughs in terms of the type of functionality offered.

OLE, on the other hand, is being designed to “create a next-generation library system that breaks away from print-based workflows and reflects the changing nature of library materials and new approaches to scholarly work.” In this way, unlike Koha or Evergreen, OLE’s competition is Ex Libris’ URM that is currently being developed and not the more traditional ILS offerings such as Ex Libris’s Aleph or Voyager, SirsiDynix’s Symphony or Unicorn, or III’s Millennium ILS.

Will OLE be successful? I think they will be, at least some degree. They have some heavy-weight academic research libraries behind them as Founding Partners including Indiana University, a Florida Consortium lead by University of Florida, Lehigh University, Duke University, North Carolina State University, University of Chicago, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, and University of Pennsylvania. Not only that, between the schools and the Mellon Foundation, almost $5 million dollars has been committed to the project over the next two years.

What will this mean for Ex Libris’ URM? I think that this is actually a welcome development for Ex Libris. If they were the only organization (commercial or non-profit) attempting to create something like the URM, I think many libraries would be more skeptical of the concept. They also will have something to judge themselves against (and for customers to judge them against) besides a traditional ILS. This may make it easier for some libraries to convince the provost or other purse string holders on campus to open up for the next generation of library systems. If Ex Libris can offer a better product, with better support, at comparable costs as implementing OLE would be, they will be successful with the URM. At this stage it is hard to know what will be better and what pricing will be, but my guess is that there will be room for both OLE and URM to be successful in this market as long as neither of them lose focus.

Somehow my November 9 version of the top 10 didn’t make it. I remember preparing it but I guess I never submitted it. Oh well. Sorry about that. Anyway, here is my November 16′th version of the College Football Top 10.

1) TCU (10-0) (prev: 1) Impressive win this weekend against Utah who has only one other loss this season

2) Cincinnati 10-0 (prev: 2) Beat a tough West Virginia team in conference.

3) Boise State 8-0 (prev: 3) Oregon’s loss to Stanford makes Boise’s biggest win not look as good, but still who did Texas, Florida, or Alabama beat out of conference that was better?

4) Texas 10-0 (prev: 4 ) Recent wins over Baylor and UCF aren’t great, but UCF proved they could step up and win a big game this past week against Houston.

5) Alabama 10-0 (prev: 5) Chattanooga Mocs? In November? What is a Moc? Way to show confidence that your team can beat a tough out of confernce team. Come on, step it up in the scheduling department SEC.

6) Florida 10-0 (prev: 6) At least one team in Florida isn’t afraid to schedule tough out of conference games. No, it isn’t Florida. It’s Florida International who earlier this season opened up against Alabama. Since then they won 3 games. Come on Florida. Aren’t you supposed to be good. Why don’t you prove it? Maybe because you’re not?

7) Georgia Tech 10-1 (prev: 9) Only lose by the Rambling Wreck this year was against Miami (FL).

8 ) Pittsburgh 7-1 (prev: 8 ) Only lose this year was against out-of-conference for North Carolina State. Nice out of conference win this past weekend against Notre Dame that is probably sending ND coach, Charlie Weiss packing.

9) Oregon 8-2 (prev 7) Only Loses to #3 Boise and what is turning out to be a really nice Stanford team.

10) Ohio State 9-2 (prev: unranked) Although Ohio State’s loss to Southern Cal is not looking so good now that Southern Cal is 5th in the Pac-10, I’ll still give them some credit for at least scheduling one tough out of conference game.

From November 8 – 11 I attended the 2009 The American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This was the first time I have ever been to Vancouver and what little I saw was pretty nice – although I didn’t see much. Normally when going to a conference in a new place I like to try to take a few extra vacation days and explore, but there is a lot going on in work and I didn’t feel I could afford the time. Thus, I really didn’t do any site-seeing to speak of. I did find a few nice brew pubs and a nice tapas place though.

Tim Bray, Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems, delivered the opening Plenary Session. I thought he gave a pretty good speech but maybe not one scholarly enough for ASIS&T. Maybe he would have been better suited for LITA? Some of the take-homes from Tim Bray’s keynote were that (according to Bray), every year approximately 1 billion mobile devices are shipped. These means that if your Web site doesn’t working on mobile devices such as the iPhone your site is a failure. Luckily it is not to hard to get your Web site to work with the iPhone as long as you follow some standards and don’t rely on Flash. Although it has been said by others, Bray reiterated the important point that the killer app on the Internet has always been people. Without people, the technology is just technology. This reminds me of the keynote from NYLA when the Keynote Speaker, David W. Lewis, pointed out that what happens on the Social Web doesn’t really become interesting until the technology becomes uninteresting. That is not to say that the technology is unimpressive or not complicated behind an application, but unless the masses can easily use it, you don’t get the kind of interesting social interaction like you do on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

One of the more interesting, and practical, sessions for an academic librarian was the panel on institutional repositories (IR) moderated by June Abbas. The two biggest take-aways to me where one: that in order for an IR to be successful it has to offer more than what we think of as a traditional IR. For example, the University of California’s repository is called eScholarship and

“provides a suite of open access, scholarly publishing services and research tools that enable departments, research units, publishing programs, and individual scholars associated with the University of California to have direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship.”

The second take-away from the IR session was the three questions faculty ask about institutional repositories: Why should I care? Why should I bother? What’s in it for me? If you can’t answer these questions, your repository program is in trouble. The library needs to be able to talk about the services the repository offers and what is in it for faculty (Increased citation, perpetual access & preservation, search optimization, etc.).

The session on Evolutionary Approaches to Information Science Research and Information Use (and specifically Marcia Bates presentation on information browsing from an evolutionary perspective) was really good. Marcia Bates, who was a last minute fill in for Amanda Spink, argued that what we typically think of browsing for information is not really correct. People don’t just look at things one item at a time. They scan, things catch their eye, maybe a flashy photo on a magazine or cover on a book, we pick it up, feel it, scan it some more, maybe read a sentence or two, etc. Thus the “browse” feature in most information systems such as library catalogs really does not come anywhere near replicating the “real” browsing experience. Librarians need to be aware of this when trying to replicate the browsing of physical stacks in virtual stacks – especially of they are sending items to off-site storage many miles away.

Other interesting session included:

• A talk that investigated the results of Google localized results. The results from Google Israel ((google.co.il)) were preferred vs. google.com results by test subjects (in Israel, obviously)
• Melanie Feinberg’s presentation on: The Use of Genre as a Design Element in Information Systems. I really need to read her conference paper on the topic in the proceedings when I get a free moment.
• A panel session about the convergence of museums, archives, and libraries. I think we are going to see more and more of this – especially on academic campuses. After all, isn’t a piece of art also a piece of information and a book also a piece of art?
• As always, SIG-CON was the highlight of the conference. Where else would you have a presentation with both Ranganathan and RuPaul in the title or learn about the important research on submissive data by Dr. Dom N. Atrix?
• The Pecha Kucha presentations on Diversity in Digital Information Environments: Opportunity or Chaos? were really nice, but maybe a but too scripted for my tastes. Also, I thought animated slides took away from the whole 20 slides by 20 seconds concept, but I did enjoy them and the content was interesting

Finally, I should mention the panel “On the Challenges of Implementing Library 2.0 Services” I was on that was organized by Michael Zimmerman and moderated by KT Vaughan. I’m obviously biased but I thought it was one of the better panels I have ever saw or was a part of. We didn’t have any presentations, just a list of questions that the panelists, KT Vaughn, myself, Maris Ramierz, and Nasser Saleh discussed (we also had Sara Rofofsky Marcus on remotely via Skype, but unfortunately the wireless connection wasn’t very good and we lost her early on). KT actually only asked one question on the list to start us off and the rest of the session was free-flowing with questions and comments from the audience (and a few answers too). This is what I think a panel should be, not 3 or 4 separate presentations. If that is what you are going to do, please submit 3 or 4 papers to be reviewed by your peers instead. Despite only asking one question of the list, the free-flow format had us covering all of the topics we had planned and then some. I hope to see more panels of this nature in the future. I actually tweeted while being on the panel which was an interesting experience. What do you say? What do you tweet? How do you pay attention? You can see the tweets from the session by searching for #asist09 and #lib2 on twitter.

On November 5 and 6, 2009 Binghamton University Libraries hosted the annual Ex Libris Mid-Atlantic (EMA) Conference at the Binghamton University Downtown Center. This was the first time I was the local host for any conference and it was a quite learning experience. While their were a few bumps in the road, I felt, and the evaluations showed, that it was a very successful conference. We ended up having a total of 51 attendees, which I thought was a nice number for this conference considering it was a new concept to Aleph sites. EMA started out as a Regional User Group for Voyager, a product of Endeavor. When Ex Libris and Endeavor merged, it became the Ex Libris Mid-Atlantic user group. Although last year their were a few Aleph sessions, this was really the first meeting that fully embraced the merger. Hopefully as more Aleph sites become aware of EMA, the attendance will continue to increase.

There were 14 breakout sessions, one plenary, lightning talks, round-tables, and two sessions by Ex Libris. All of the sessions I went to were well done and I felt I either learned something or got some ideas from them. For example, I saw a demo from one library that showed which of their iPods were checked out and when they were do. While we don’t circulate iPods, we do circulate laptop computers and I think a Web page that lists this information may be a great idea.

I enjoyed seeing the plenary talk, User Research at the University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries: Using an Anthropological Approach to Build a Better Catalog by Nora Dimmock of the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries. I think more libraries ought to invest in this kind of research. I really like the idea of having an Anthropologist on staff. While only larger academic libraries could probably afford to have a full time anthropologist, I do think libraries could do more of this. Maybe this is an opportunity to work with the Anthropology department on campus? Maybe when hiring a subject librarian in this area, you look for one that has an advanced anthropology degree and make 1/2 of their responsibilities to do this type of research?

The lightning talks were new to EMA and were well received, but I think they probably should not have been the last thing on the schedule. Maybe a second plenary talk would have fit the bill so everyone would hang around. Also new to EMA was general library sessions. These were also extremely popular and people suggested that we continue to do this and maybe even expand them. I agree with that, except we do have to be careful that we remember we are the Ex Libris Mid-Atlantic conference and still have to keep Ex Libris products as the core of the conference. This is were it would have been nice to have a few more sessions for the non-ILS products. While we did have a Metalib and two SFX sessions, we didn’t have any sessions on any of the other non-ILS products. Hopefully EMA can attract more presentations in the non-ILS arena next year.

As I mentioned, putting on the conference itself was a learning experience. Unfortunately Binghamton University does not offer “one-stop shopping” for on-campus people who want to put on a conference. This meant searching for and trying to figure out who was responsible for what. While this proved to be a challenge, I must say that once I figured out who was the correct person for a particular thing, they all were extremely helpful and a pleasure to work with. And, now that I know who to deal with, if I ever host another conference I’ll be in good shape.

The conference presentations will be posted to ELUNA’s documents repository in the next few days, so look for them there.

Also, kudos to Dillinger’s for hosting the Thursday-night reception. Everyone who showed up had a great time.

Carl Grant, President of Ex Libris North America, has weighed in on the SirsiDynix – Open Source Software kerfuffle. For the most part I agree with Carl’s take. But I disagree with him and Clifford Lynch that the development of Open Source ILSs lead to un-necessary redundancies. Redundant solutions are a good thing. They keep everyone honest. If there was only one ILS vendor, we would be beholding to them.

If libraries can’t afford redundancies, how do we explain the redundancy in the proprietary ILS marketplace? Don’t “[w]e simply have more important things to do”? Why should we believe that redundancy is acceptable in the proprietary ILS world but Open Source competition is not? Not only is there redundancy between proprietary competitors (really how much difference is there between a SirsiDynix. III, or Ex Libris ILS? I’d hazard a guess a lot less than when one compares these to an Open Source ILS such as Koha or Evergreen), Ex Libris itself is doing redundant development with Voyager, Aleph, and now the URM.

If libraries can’t afford redundant development how can the customers of Ex Libris ILS offerings afford redundant development by Ex Libris? The answer is that redundant development is not an issue to be worried about. When it comes down to it, at least in my opinion, redundancy isn’t the issue at all, in fact I think it is a red herring. Return on investment is the issue that matters. For some places an ILS like Koha might provide the best return, while others might need a more full featured ILS like Voyager or Aleph. If an Open Source ILS is cheaper (either through a contract with a service provider or by self support) and provides the required functionality or the library can add it, investing in the “redundant development” is appropriate. Maybe it doesn’t move librarianship forward, but it does move the individual library forward by allowing them to re-invest in other areas and/or their staff. As I mentioned on a previous post on the SirsiDynix and Open Source Kerfuffle, each library should evaluate all the options available and invest in whichever one suits them best.

Having worked with both current Ex Libris ILSs, I can tell you for the most part they do the same thing and both are pretty good at doing what they do. They allow libraries to catalog books, circulate materials, budget expenses, etc. However they both have different strengths and weaknesses. While I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend either ILS to a library, it is clear that Voyager is better suited for some libraries and Aleph is better suited for others. This is why Ex Libris is still selling and supporting these “redundant” efforts. Depending on your library, one or the other may offer a better return on investment.

1) TCU (8-0) (prev: 1) Easily beat an UNLV team that isn’t very good, but still stays on top. In two weeks they play Utah and we will see how good they really are.

2) Cincinnati 8-0 (prev: 2) At least the pollsters put Cincy ahead of Southern Cal this week. I here people stay the pollsters have an East Coast bias, but really they have a big name bias.

3) Boise State 8-0 (prev: 4) There comfortable win over PAC-10 leading Oregon looks even more impresive after Oregon’s blow out of Southern Cal. This moves them up ahead of Alabama.

4) Texas 7-0 (prev: 6 ) A blow out win on the road at Oklahoma State moves the Longhorns up one spot.

5) Alabama 8-0 (prev: 3) Drops down despite an off week because their one good win (Va Tech) isn’t looking so good no more after Va Tech drops to 5-3.

6) Florida 8-0 (prev: 7) Georgia isn’t as good as they benn, but still a nice victory at the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail party combined with Iowa’s lack luster first half moves the Gators up one spot in my pole.

7) Iowa 9-0 (prev: 6)They may have been lackluster against Indiana in the first half, but they were on fire in the 4th quarter. If they play like that the rest of the season they may actually make it to the BCS title game. However, I have my doubts.

8 ) Oregon 7-1 (prev: 8 ) (Top ranked one lose team with only loss on the road at #4 Boise State and a quality win over Southern Cal)

9) Georgia Tech 7-1 (prev: 10) Moves up one place after Southern Cal losses to Oregon.

10) LSU 7-1 (prev: unranked) LSU moved into the top 10 following Southern Cal’s loss. LSU’s only loss so far came against Florida. We’ll see how good LSU is this coming weekend when they play on the road at Alabama.

I know that I am a little late to the game, but I’ve been traveling and just now had the time to read over Stephen Abrams’ “Integrated Library System Platforms on Open Source” (pdf) white paper. Really, from all of the tweets I saw about it, I thought it would be much worse. Yes, there is a good bit of FUD in it, but what else would you expect? If they wrote a position paper about Ex Libris or III there would be as well. Certainly there are problems of un-cited quotes that may or may not have been used out of context. Yes, as Abrams says when asked about it, they are attributed, but when and where they were said has been left out and that is important to their understanding. If someone testing a new software product said it was bad in alpha or beta stage of development that has no bearing now. If someone said it is stupid to create a new ILS before it was finished, now that it is finished and is successful, it doesn’t mean much except maybe the person who said it was wrong with his prediction. The question is what is the situation now and that is why citations are important in these types of things. By not offer citations when asked, it makes me believe Abrams knows his use of Clifford Lynch’s view on Open Source ILS is either taken out of context or is dated.

Abrams tries to say that the US Military restricts the use of Open Source because it is insecure. The fact is, they not only use Open Source, they have also developed Open Source. Yes, they have an approval process, but that applies to all software. An Open Source ILS is not a terrorist threat. Abrams says “SirsiDynix has a long tradition of using open source in our solutions…” but if we are to believe his FUD, open source is a threat. So, If Open Source was such a threat, then why do they use it in their products? Abrams wants his cake and wants to eat it too.

A few other things that jump out to me from Abrams paper which are not directly related to Open Source. First Abram writes that “Open source software developers are spending the majority of their time and resources on getting the back room operations right, 30 years after we already completed the process.” If I were Abrams, I wouldn’t think this is a good thing to rest your laurels on. This is exactly one reason why OLE is being developed. Libraries need systems that weren’t based in the 1970’s. Ex Libris, one of SirsiDynix’s proprietary competitors, realizes this and this is why they are creating the URM. Libraries can no longer afford to operate on 30-year old technology.

The second quote that jumped out is that using Open Source might involve “hiring an expensive consultant.” I can just as easily say that getting an ILS from SirsiDynix might mean signing an expensive contract. When it comes down to it an Open Source product is neither bad or good for a particular organization just because it is Open Source. Yes, I believe that the Open Source method can, and often does, make better software, often has a lower TCO, and that it has many benefits over proprietary methods both in practice and in theory. I also believe Open Source is a good fit for libraries because the philosophies complement each other (both librarians and Open Source supporters, want to give information away to make the world a better place). That said, each software acquisition decision needs to be evaluated on its own merits. There may be different things involved in the evaluation and different conclusions based on the type of library, the staffing of the library, the budget of the library, etc. What works for my library may not work for yours. Where I work we have a wide range of products we use. Some are locally hosted Open Source; some are local hosted proprietary products; some are hosted proprietary products. Each one of these methods works for us in our situation and we are happy with our choices (well, as happy as one can ever be). We considered the options with an open mind and depending on the project, staffing available, the financials, etc. we have come to different conclusions for different applications. If you are considering any significant software acquisition I’d encourage you to evaluate all the viable options and let the best solution win. Sometimes it will be proprietary. Sometimes it will be Open Source. My guess is that in the future the decisions will increasingly become to go with an Open Source solution, but time will tell.

Abrams says that he would like “a Respectful Discussion” but that is not what his white paper offered. Using the “T” word (terrorist) and quotes calling the creation of an Open Source ILS stupid are not ways to begin a successful dialogue on Open Source in Libraries. Let us hope we can move forward from here with a respectful, and truthful, dialogue.