Over on the Talis Forums there has been a discussion thread running for the last few months entitled Dream OPAC. In a forum area inhabited mainly by users of Talis Systems it is inevitable that some of the wishes expressed are slanted towards Talis products, but some of the wishes definitely express the desire for a better user interface for the library user of systems from any vendor, or none.

“Go on. tempt me - I want to see images and video, I want to hear sound clips, I want colour and movement and interaction. I want to read what other readers think about what they’ve read and I want to be able to contribute my own opinion. And when I find a mistake in the catalogue I want to be able to point it out - and perhaps I want to add information too. Our users are an intelligent lot (well, some of them are) so why not get them involved? Prism is so dull and boring. Take it or leave it - what would you choose to do?

“The interface needs to be much more customisable - we should be able to drop the search function into any html page, and have complete control over the formatting of search results and full record displays.

“Books on the same shelf -
To browse a shelfmark index. This might seem like going backwards in functionality, as we already have a same subject class-based search which is more comprehensive (and probably not much used), but I wonder if this might not be more intuitive to grasp and prove more popular - perhaps we could link from it to shelves with the same class elsewhere in the library. Naturally we might get some flak from readers who complain that the books aren’t actually on the shelf where they are supposed to be (not that that would happen in our library of course).

On the subject of the wishes of librarians, take a look at NGC4Lib (Next Generation Catalogs for Libraries) mailing list - archives here. There is a fascinating debate going around many aspects of where the LMS/ILS should be heading. Today Amy Ostrom started a new thread with the wonderful name of ‘Laundry list for NGC (long post) ‘. Her opening paragraph is refreshingly pragmatic:

I have not been able to keep up with all the posts, but it seems no one will just create a substantial list - too much theory and questioning/doubt behind everything. I don’t know about anyone else, but I am myself an end user, and I have a LOT of things I would love to see. I don’t care if it is done in collaboration with Amazon, or Worldcat, or any organization, but this is what I want. I hope this proves beneficial. (Apologies in advance for a long post.)

Amy has a good point, there are far too many email and blog inches wasted in discussing which particular consortium/interest group/vendor/service should be the prime contractor/controller for delivering the library of the future - or is Open Source the silver bullet. Time will probably tell that the final solution(s) will be a combination of all of the above. The sooner everybody stops trying to protect their own special interest group and seriously start cooperating - the sooner it will happen. Quite frankly the end users don’t care - they just want libraries to start competing with the rest of the web, and soon. Amy’s is sure is a long post, well worth joining the list to read.

The following comment later in the thread, from Gail Richardson caught my eye

I hate that each library does whatever slightly differently. I think it would be great if I could just go to one giant libary site, search and discover, then finally link to my local library where I can place a hold and pick it up.

Too right Gail. Why should you have to use, and by definition have to get the hang of, a new interface just because you are searching a different library? It would be like Google having a different user interface experience for each City.

I was about to respond to her comments, when my colleague Rob Styles beat me to it:

Here at Talis we have a service called Source for ILL Librarians that is free to contribute to and free to discover holdings on. The platform services that power this are also powering the freely available Cenote. Cenote links through to libraries wherever we have the information to and we’ve based that on an open directory that anyone can use and help maintain. These things aren’t just possible; there are some folks here who want to help you do it.

Source is a UK service, but given today’s technologies, the web and other advancements there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t get what you want globally. We just have to change the way we think about this stuff; open up, stop pretending we can “own” the data that everyone needs to share and, above all, build on a cost model more like the one Google started with.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

(Photo taken by Heaven`s Gate (John) displayed in Flickr)

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