Over on It’s All Good, Alice refers to an apparently interesting presentation within OCLC about the need to see “massive monolithic application systems … divided into smaller Web services”.

Absolutely. Here on panlibus, we’ve been among those agitating in exactly that direction for a very long time, and it’s good to see senior management at OCLC apparently saying similar things.

They’re cheaper to run (smaller Web services, not OCLC’s senior management). They’re more flexible. They are better suited to mixing with components from outside the library in order to build genuinely useful applications that assist in end user tasks which are rarely neatly carved up into ‘library’ and ‘non-library’.

That’s partly why we’re investing so much in the Platform, and working so hard to get others to share in the work, to their benefit and ours.

Of course, some “massive monolithic application systems” might make all the right noises, but try awfully hard to stay monolithic… and to trap their customers - and those customers’ data - tightly inside.

Hands up, anyone who wants to stay in one of those ?

Technorati Tags: Library 2.0, OCLC, Platforms, Talis, Web 2.0

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