Shameless Self-Promotion

Posted On Jun 13 2007 by

I will make no apologies, for what is a blog if not self-promotion? Innovate or die? Many of you might have already heard that I am moderating a debate at ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., titled “The Ultimate Debate.” For the record, I didn’t give it that name. In fact, I am a even a substitute moderator for the event, doing a good turn for my overbooked and much more unflappable colleague Roy Tennant. I don’t particularly like superlatives (it comes from reading a lot of press releases)—where does one go from “Ultimate”? Oh well. But I do like …


What Next? Part 3: Challenge

Posted On Jun 6 2007 by

This is the third and final instalment of “What’s Next” for the library automation marketplace. Time to review: Major consolidation of the library automation market, the emergence of viable open source software solutions and new business models for supporting them, and a somewhat rancorous and impatient customer base that fears that profit and efficiency have out-gunned innovation and service. This is the making for a dangerous cocktail. What’s a vendor to do? What’s a library to do? The Prod IMHO, I suspect that most libraries are going to sit tight. As have been mentioned many times, the pain and expense …


What Next? Part 2: The Open Source ILS

Posted On May 30 2007 by

It’s true that I am one of the skeptics. I’ll state that up front. But, in truth, my skepticism toward building an open source integrated library system was born in optimism that the vendors of proprietary software would be paying close attention to the landscape. Alas, I don’t think they were. Some tried Most people have forgotten that Dynix wrote a white paper in 2003 called“Horizon Open Technology: A Vision for the Future” that was the basis of the original Horizon 8.0 (I looked all over for this white paper online and had to fall back on my own archive). …