Okay, so I have not been the most faithful blogger, lately. I was going to make an excuse about increased micro-blogging on Twitter or social activity on Facebook, but those have fallen rather dormant as well, so I have no good excuses. I do, however have some good news, and that is some guest postings from my friend and colleague, Matt Goldner.
So today, guest columnist, Matt Goldner, Product and Technology Advocate, contributes his thoughts on sharing systems and workflows to deliver a more effective experience to patrons. In his new role, Matt will be on the road visiting libraries to see what new things are happening in the community. I’m hoping he will be a frequent poster to Hectic Pace (Hectic Goldner?) and make up for my periodic slacking.
Take it away, Matt….
While attending the 2009 Information Delivery Services (IDS) Conference in Oswego, I saw a challenging presentation on a new service the project is building for the members. The Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) was discussed and demonstrated. The service offering itself was interesting and well thought out but it is the concept behind it that really challenged me.
For the last 12 years most of my focus has been on breaking down the silos users experience in trying to discover and access
library collections. The focus of GIST is instead to break down the silos that library staff experience in their supply chains for information selection, acquisition, accessioning and description. The truly radical part is the premise that libraries are simply another supply chain to each other and that the workflow between inter-library loan departments and acquisition departments should be broken down.
The end goal of GIST is for ILL and acquisition departments to use the same service to manage their selection and ordering process with the ability to also get the descriptive record into the systems it needs to reside in. I view this type of thinking as critical to the future of libraries. We often continue to maintain workflows and look for new systems that will support these old methods. Instead projects likeGIST challenge some basic concepts and assumptions and give us the opportunity to change workflows to match the real needs of today’s library.
For more information on GIST: http://idsproject.org/Tools/GIST.aspx
-Matt
