A library in Ohio just migrated to KohaZoom, the open-source version Integrated Library System. This particular version of Koha appears to be developed by a vendor, LibLime. You can see The system in action here.
Notice anything about it? That’s right, folks. It looks just like Amazon, and it uses Amazon images. Bye, bye, usability problems. Hello instant street cred with patromers.
Needless to say, I want one.
For those who have not seen the news, Ex Libris is changing hands. Francisco Partners is purchasing EL. Francisco Partners also owns these companies. I am not sure what, if anything, this will mean for the future of the company. It appears that EL is the only library services vendor that Francisco partners owns.
I like digitization. I like for people to be able to access books and other resources remotely. I understand that digitization costs money. I know that the various vendors who digitize usually need to get some sort of return on their investment. But this is ridiculous. Logos Bible Software company is willing to sell the “J. A. Broadus Preaching Collection,” a digital collection of three John A. Broadus books, for the low, low price of $59.95. That’s the price with $15.00 off, folks. They assure you it’s a bargain, too. They could “only locate a single copy of Sermons and Addresses anywhere on the web–available used for $100!” They should have looked harder. Alibris has five copies right now, the most expensive of which is $34.95. They are also willing to sell you A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons as part of the package. All well and good. The only problem is, there are already two free, standards-compliant, online editions of the work here and here (you can also get this free). Both of these editions are older than the Dargan-edited edition that Logos is offering.
Look, I know Logos probably has major $$$ invested in equipment, workers, and the like. Still, I think the price on this software is a little exorbidant. I am willing to bet that
I know there are attendant costs with digitization, but it seems crazy to me to charge that much for something that libraries are trying to provide for free. If you are going to charge a good bit, provide a good bit of content. For example, Baptist Standard Bearer’s Baptist History Collection costs $59.95, but you get 43,298 pages with it.
Of course, the whole discussion brings up the concept of the invisible web, because the library versions of Broadus’ work are buried or non-existent in a good Google search, while Logos’s product is the second entry. Libraries need to do a better job of bringing their digital resources to the fore so that these types of digitization ventures do not occur.
Kudos to the folks at Ex Libris for jumping into the library 2.0 discussion. Many librarians are currently complaining about the slowness of vendors to react to changes within computing culture. To be fair, the employees for some vendors are doing the same. For example, Stephen Abrams, SirsiDynix's VP for Innovation, bemoaned this slowness during his section of the Dead & Emerging Technologies Forum at CIL2006. It looks as if Ex Libris is working to at least stay close to the curve, if not ahead of it.
Patrons today probably expect that all library resources should be able to be found in one place. Federated searching and link resolvers are a nice start, but Ex Libris has gone one step further. Today, they officially published that they are developing a tool called Primo, "a complete solution for the discovery and delivery of diverse content types." I had a chance to speak with the folks at Ex Libris during the recent CIL2006, and I have to admit, they have my curiosity peaked. I like the fact that they are trying to bring all of a libraries resources into one place. I am extremely excited that they decided to make a fopac-like product that allows for tagging and comments. I cannot wait to see how this functions, and I think I would love to be in on the testing of this product.
I do have a few questions, though.
If anyone has any other questions, feel free to leave them in a comment. Perhaps someone from Ex Libris will come over and discuss all this. Whether they do or not, kudos to them for trying to give librarians what they say they want!
My administrator had a great idea recently. He wanted to be able to discuss important books and ideas with the staff, and yet he did not want to overly tax our time. So, he enlisted the help of a bright, active patron to write brief book reviews and present ideas that our staff could discuss a couple of times a month. Since he started this activity, we have discussed such books as Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat and Oliver O’Donovan’s Common Objects of Love and discussed the potential impact they could have on our library. He recently had the patron, Matt Crawford, research the concept of Library 2.0 for the staff. Some of our staff were very familiar with the concept, and others were not. I thought Matt did a pretty good job of presenting the idea, so I asked his permission to publish his piece on my blog. So, if you would like to read a patron’s summary of Library 2.0, you can download it at the link below.
The Family Man Librarian has a post with interesting insights on the subject of folksonomic OPACs (or fopacs as I like to call them). I think he is correct when he says,
After thinking about this further, I am wondering if I’m pursuing this from a logical point of view as an “either/or” situation. (Taxonomies or folksonomies.) Instead I think it is really, or will really be, a “both/and” situation.
If libraries move toward incorporating folksonomies into their OPACs, it probably should not be used to replace the traditional taxonomies that librarians have created to categorize books. One reason is because library OPACs differ from web-based applications such as Tim Spalding’s LibraryThing. (By the way, Spalding’s comments in the Family Man Librarian’s post are worth reading. I really hope someone takes him up on it.) OPACs differ primarily in the way that books are cataloged. They cataloging data initially comes into the OPAC through catalogers, not users. With LibraryThing, every book gets a tag because users provide them when they load their records. If libraries were to scrap cataloging classification data (which I could never see happening) then the possibility exists that some books would not get tagged because a user never looked for the book. What I am saying is that if libraries ever really design fully functional fopacs, the folksonomic part of the OPAC will have to act merely as a supplement to traditional cataloging classifications. It must. Otherwise, not every book will have the classification data it needs.
I would be interested to see a fopac that not only incorporated Tim Spalding’s LibraryThing data, but that also added to it. I don’t know if this could ever happen, because the data in LibraryThing is dependent upon user accounts, and libraries, especially academic libraries, constantly purge accounts. But if it could, if an entire movement of libraries could participate in such a venture, then I believe libraries would see an extremely useful supplement to their traditional data. Likewise, I think the data that library patrons could provide would be a nice supplement to the data LibraryThing already has. LibraryThing only improves the more people use it.
In my opinion, considering the use of folksonomies in OPACs does not mean that the traditional classification data that libraries have is not good. It’s great. It’s irreplaceable. It stems from the work of generations of librarians who have been dedicated to helping patrons find the materials they need. But it is also able to be improved. If not, why issue periodic updates to the Dewey and LC classifications? The very fact that classifications undergo “tweaking” means that we know they can be improved. So if they can be improved, why not supplement them? Would it be possible for libraries to have an OPAC that recognizes what librarians call things and what patrons call things? I hope so. What would happen if we put traditional cataloging data, LibraryThing, and a highly visual OPAC in a blender? Probably something special. It’s just my opinion, but I think if both types of data could be incorporated and added to an OPAC with a powerful interactive visual interface, like AquaBrowser, we would see a fopac that every patron could fall in love with.
