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31 January 2007
Presentation screencast available - Stellenbosch Symposium
I am often asked if I can make copies of my presentations available. A request I am always happy to fulfill if possible - the Creative Commons logo on my slides is not there just to look pretty.
Visiting the Previous Events page on the Talis website will reveal links to presentations from most of the events my colleagues and I attend.
Just looking at the slides is often not enough to to gain a full understanding of what a speaker was saying and/or demonstrating. To try to overcome this, I am starting to record screencasts of presentations that I have given. Ideally these would be a recording of the actual presentation but this, more often than not, is not possible. As an alternative I am trying out the recording re-runs of presentations to a small audience of Talis staff.
The first of these - is now available for viewing:
Presentation Title: Web 2.0 - Library 2.0 "An architecture of participation"
Originally presented at: Stellenbosh Symposium, South Africa - November 2006
Screencast 47mins: Link
Technorati Tags: Talis, Talis Platform, Web Services, Stellenbosh Symposium, Library, Library 2.0, Web 2.0, GoogleMaps
Posted by Richard Wallis at 03:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
30 January 2007
Google puts books on the map
Ever wondered where in the world the place you are reading about is located? In an act of self-mashup Google Book Search now includes a Google Map of "Places mentioned in this book" feature.
As they say in their announcement:
Our team has begun to animate the static information found in books by organizing a sample of locations from them on an interactive Google Map, with snippets of text from the book, and links to the actual pages where the locations are mentioned. When our automatic techniques determine that there are a good number of quality locations from a book to show you, you'll find a map on the "About this book" page.
My techie brain is intrigued by their "When our automatic techniques determine that there are a good number of quality locations from a book to show you" - another bottle of Google Secret Sauce please waiter!
I also wonder how long it will be before there will be a version that links to a Google Map of Middle Earth embedded on the Lord of the Rings Book Search page?
Technorati Tags: Talis, Google, BookSearch, GoogleMaps
Posted by Richard Wallis at 04:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New UI Metaphors starting to emerge?
This posting is one of those triggered by the coming together of several things in to a 'light bulb moment'.
The first, although I didn't realise it until now, is the Multi-touch touch screen technology used in the iPhone. If you haven't seen Steve Jobs' launch presentation yet, go take a look even if it is only for the bit [16:00 minutes in] where he shows the natural way it scrolls with just a finger flick and [33:30 minutes in] where he uses two fingers in what he calls the pinch to zoom in and out.
The second was less dramatic. Whilst playing with my new phone, I suddenly realised that using the joystick control for moving around the menus just come naturally - no instruction, no reading through obscure documentation, it was just obvious how it would work. What you need from a user interface is intuitive just works-ness.
The final thing was a video demonstration of BumpTop. I could whiter on for several paragraphs explaining it, but better still go watch the video.
Impressed, I was! My colleague Ian Corns, who gave me the heads up on this, postulates on combining BumpTop with the Wii - now that would introduce a new human/computer interaction metaphor. Unfortunately in an office environment, it could also introduce many Wii injuries from over enthusiastic document organizing.
Now [here comes the light bulb] if the tablet screen had Multi-touch installed; imagine reorganizing your documents on your BumpTop with a flick of an index finger, shuffling the piles with roll of a couple fingertips, sweeping the clutter in to the trash with the wipe of a palm - how much more natural could it get!
If the piles on the DeskBumpTop were books, or journals/articles that had been collected from a bibliographic discovery session how much more intuitive would the ensuing research be?
If I was the guys from BumpTop I would be knocking on Mr Jobs' door, if he isn't already knocking on theirs.
Update:
For an excellent, and mesmerizing, demonstration of what I'm thinking about but on a larger scale than a tablet screen - take a look at this. Thanks Leo for pointing me at the link for this.
Technorati Tags: Talis, BumpTop, UI, Libraries, iPhone
Posted by Richard Wallis at 01:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
26 January 2007
Putting your information in front of the user with a little help from Talis and Google
I've been looking forward to showing you this for a while...
You'll all recognise Google Scholar; one of those sites people go to, where meaningful pointers back to libraries are really beneficial for the user and the library?
Note the “Find it with Talis” link after the book records on that page of results. Click on one of those links and follow it (for now) to our very own Project Cenote, and a book by my Ph.D supervisor...
I'm really quite pleased... :-)
If you'd like your library to appear in the list, get in touch about sharing your holdings data with the Platform without charge, penalty, restriction or obfuscation. Watch this space for more information on the ever-growing list of places in which Platform-powered content can show up.
Oh, and if you want the book for yourself or your library, pop over here. I can highly recommend it...
Technorati Tags: Google Scholar, Libraries, Library 2.0, Project Cenote, Talis, Talis Platform
Posted by Paul Miller at 02:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
25 January 2007
The Librarian and the IT Professional
Sean Robinson from ACPL has been reflecting on the anecdotally widespread phenomenon of conflict between IT departments and Library staff.
It came down to a couple of issues. Basically the types of people that are attracted to these fields and types of jobs they have to do have conflicting goals.
One of solutions is to look at the things we have in common and to have a sense of humor.
To help ease the interaction, he and his team have put together a series of Youtube ads for us to enjoy. Here is the first which is excellent.
(link)
I can't wait for the rest. You can't beat humor to lubricate social interaction and understanding between disparate departments in an organization.
Thanks to John Blyberg for the heads up on this.
Technorati Tags: Talis, Humor, You Tube, ACPL IT Libraries
Posted by Richard Wallis at 05:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
24 January 2007
Panlibus Magazine - issue 5
The fifth issue of Panlibus Magazine was published yesterday and the physical copies will be hitting subscribers desks very soon.
Those who don't subscribe (let Marketing know if you'd like to), or who want to point at it online, the whole Magazine is once again reproduced as a PDF for you to download.
With independent features from the BBC, Microsoft, government and industry advisors, this issue comprises a solid mix of government policy, professional insight, case studies and technology viewpoints. Juliet Leeves, Library Systems Consultant describes the UK Core Specification and the efficiencies for libraries and suppliers, and Paul Gerhardt, Director for the BBC’s Creative Archive describes the project and the Creative Archive Licence Group. Issue 5 also looks at the recent Local UK Government White Paper ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’ and the possible impact on libraries, whilst Microsoft’s Tony Hey wonders if open access for scholarly publications is inevitable.
This is the best issue yet!
Technorati Tags: Talis, Panlibus, BBC, Creative Archive, Microsoft
Posted by Richard Wallis at 11:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Are union catalogues cool again?
I ask only partly in jest, but it is interesting, in these times of Google Book Search, Google Scholar, Microsoft's Windows Live Academic Search and their ilk that various UK and Dutch stakeholders are coming together in London next week to discuss the scope and potential for a UK union catalogue or catalogues.
The meeting is being organised by the Research Information Network, and attendees include representatives from the various stakeholders in existing catalogues that serve some needs of some parts of the UK population, some of the time. We've been here before, of course, including work at the turn of the century on a Feasibility Study for a National Union Catalogue [PDF]. The UK also has some well-established services such as M25, COPAC, CAIRNS and others, all serving their particular groups of users.
I'm going along to talk about some of the ways in which the Talis Platform can help here, both making the jobs of those running existing services easier, and also facilitating new services to new audiences. As you'll be aware, data shared with the Platform from UK-based contributors already makes it the largest single source of information on the contents of UK libraries; it's as close as we currently get to a non-partisan national union catalogue, and the apis and licensing mean that it's there for use in building all sorts of new applications.
Along with others who are facilitating sessions on the day, I've prepared a short position statement which has been circulated to attendees. Although written primarily for a UK-based and university-interested audience, the paper may be of interest to other readers of this blog, and it's available for download [PDF].
In following up on the event, and continuing to demonstrate the potential of the Talis Platform, we'll be organising a webinar during February; watch this space for more information on that.
Today's picture is again from Flickr, and again Creative Commons-licensed. It's 'Rings', by Lisa Batty. Rings, as in union, as in marriage. Geddit?
Technorati Tags: Audience, Education, Free Our Data, JISC, Libraries, meeting, MLA, OCLC, open data, Participation, Cenote, RLN, SOA, Standards, Talis, Talis Community Licence, Talis Community License, Talis Platform, TDN, Trust, web services, WorldCat
Posted by Paul Miller at 03:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Blyberg shares innovation
Like lots of other people, I thought John Blyberg of Ann Arbor District Library had been a bit quite of late. Then came this: AADL.org Goes Social.
It only took a year, but I finally got permission to go ahead with implementing what I’ve dubbed “The SOPAC” here at AADL.....
...So what is the SOPAC? It’s basically a set of social networking tools integrated into the AADL catalog. It gives users the ability to rate, review, comment-on, and tag items...
I could ramble on for ages describing what he has implemented, but as the say a picture is worth, etc., etc. - instead I heartily recommend that you view his screencast embedded in the middle of his post.
John has not just put comments, ratings, and tags in to the AADL user interface; He has really thought about how users may want to interact with and manage their personal view of these new services. Great job, well implemented John - Blyberg++.
But that is not the main reason for me to comment on this. John closes his post with:
Because I feel that this version of AADL.org is a significant milestone, I’ve made a tarball of the source code publicly available for download. Included in the tarball is our middle-ware “glue” that allows us to interface Drupal with the III server in addition to all the SOPAC code and supporting libraries. Bear in mind that this code will definitely not work out-of-the-box but could definitely be made to work with any III server with XMLOPAC support. ...You can download the package here....
So add this to a copy of Drupal and you too can start to replicate some of the innovative work John and his team have applied to the AADL catalog.
Sharing Innovation has been a mantra here at Talis for some time, it is great to see examples of this being driven by others in our community. Blyberg++
Technorati Tags: Talis, AADL, Shared Innovation, SOPAC Tagging Libraries
Posted by Richard Wallis at 12:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
23 January 2007
Sirsi Dynix get Second Life
As announced via InfoIsland.org:
SirsiDynix Sponsors Alliance Library System’s Second Life Library 2.0; will fund the two main islands in the Info Island project on Second Life
The two Second Life islands sponsored by SirsiDynix are Info Island and Teen Info Island, which is named “Eye4YouAlliance.”
Having been involved with Second Life an Alliance Libraries for some time [Alliance Second Life Library won the second prize in the Talis Mashing Up The Library competition in august last year. Talis also sponsors Cybrary City another island in Second Life adjacent to Info Island, where approximately 30 public and academic libraries are represented and Talis have a virtual office.] it is great to welcome another member of the vendor community in to this virtual world.
Gaining this welcome further sponsorship, in addition to that so far provided by Talis, will add power to the elbow of the Alliance team, who are doing sterling work in promoting and sharing innovation for libraries in both Second Life and Teen Second Life.
Securing sponsorship for Info Island in particular, where the competition winning Second Life Library is located, I'm sure is very welcome to them.
It will be interesting to see the thoughts of Stephen Abram, Sirsi Dynix's well known representative in the blogosphere, on Second Life after this announcement.
Update:
Stephen Abram, as expected, was not long in commenting on the anouncement:
I've been keeping this under my hat for so long I could burst. SirsiDynix is so excited about Second Life that we’ve taken to sponsoring a few of our clients there. Watch for the February issue of SirsiDynix OneSource where I'll have an article all about this - complete with cool links. I am getting the same feeling about SL that I got about the web in 1994....
Short, but to the point.
As I have said before, on certain aspects of Second Life, I agree with Stephen that what we are seeing today could well be the begining of something as radical as the Web when it started.
Whilst waitng for the cool links to appear in OneSource next month, you might enjoy the the Second Life article by Kity Pope - Executive Director, The Alliance Library and our very own Paul Miller, in the just released Issue 5 [pdf] of the excellent [and I am not just saying that because it is published by Talis] Panlibus magazine.
Technorati Tags: Talis, Second Life, Libraries, SirsDynix
Posted by Richard Wallis at 05:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
18 January 2007
Is Marc fit for purpose?
Is Marc fit for purpose? - Depends what the purpose is of course.
Last week in another posting I was singing the praises of the NGC4Lib mailing list:
Talking of conversations, get yourself signed up to the NGC4Lib (Next Generation Catalogs for Libraries) mailing list. Well worth joining to listen in on insightful discussions around the next generation library catalog and associated library stuff. (Archives available here)
Over the last few days there has been an excellent debate 'coyle/hillman article from dlib' underway on the list. The starting point was the recent article by Karen Coyle and Diane Hillmann in the D-Lib Magazine "Resource Description and Access (RDA)".
In response to quotes from Coyle/Hillmann such as:
Too many librarians still consider themselves the only true experts both in bibliographic metadata creation and in service to information seekers, behaving condescendingly to others newer to the information enterprise. But users have spoken with their keyboards, overwhelmingly preferring non-traditional and non-library sources of information and methods of information discovery.
Eric Lease Morgan opened up the debate with this comment:
In short, maybe cataloging rules need to be radically altered not incrementally tweaked, and the rules may need to take into greater consideration the almost completely changed information environment in which we live and work.
Stimulated by this:
Get rid of Marc-Speak! Sure that's going to be really hard, but as long as we use 100$a in our day-to-day language to mean an author's name there will be a barrier between the catalogue and the rest of the world.
... from my colleague Rob Styles, the debate has since evolved in to a discussion around the the merits of Marc, as an encoding/transmission format and as a conversational style chosen by the cataloguing community. Is MODS a good evolution towards a metadata standard that help library data be consumable on a web-scale where most of the implementers do not do Marc-Speak.
Are things things like MODS just Marc with lipstick on; do we need something new; is just translating Marc in to some new fancy XML dialect sufficient or is there a fundamental problem with it as a record format; why oh why does Marc concatenate an author's name plus a bit a of punctuation in to single field; these are all questions raised.
My two pence worth in the debate included this:
If libraries are going to have other sites and services consume their services, we are going to have to provide access and results in a way that they understand and are used to. The underlying complexities of the data standards, and the issues around those standards must be hidden from them. Just like Amazon, you send them a search string, and they give you data back. How that data is held and indexed is their problem not ours. The same should be true for consumers of our services.
Coming from Talis you would expect me to say, but I make no excuses for it, that the bibliographic world needs to provide its services via a Platform within which is hidden all the complexities that should be of no interest to the consumers of our services. In that way 'Library' will get built in to the rest of the information environment; if not, libraries will remain the domain of the 'specialist' Internet user.
This debate raises some big 'ol issues, and challenges some long held opinions and assumed truths, so its not going to conclude sometime soon. Nevertheless it is good to see it starting [at last]. It is up to all of us to keep it going constructively towards a conclusion.
(Photo taken by clairemaphone displayed in Flickr)
Technorati Tags: Talis, NGC4Lib, Talis Platform, Marc, MODS, Libraries, Metadata
Posted by Richard Wallis at 12:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
17 January 2007
Talis unplugged
At Talis we have been blogging for a while now, the earliest posting I can find for Panlibus is August 2004. Not just in the company generalized blogs like Nodalities, Source, Infrablog, and this one, but many staff have links to their personal blogs referenced from Talis pages.
One of the great joys of working at Talis is the switched on bunch of people working around you, an almost equal joy is watching their thoughts evolve in their blog postings.
The number of personal blogs published by Talis staff has grown to the stage where it has become sensible to group them together.
So Talisians was born. Ian Davis has pulled together the feeds, from the fifteen (and counting) blogs from Talis Staff, in river of news style.
So if you want an insight in to the people that are Talis, or at least the approx. 18% that blog, point your aggregator at Talisians - and a varied mix of thoughts you will find there.
Some recent topics have included, Drivers of BMWs, REST Protocols, programming language differences, many episodes in the building of a MK Indy, OpenID, and the way your perspective on blogs changes once you start one. So no guarantees as to what you will get, other than to say it is usually a healthy mix of thoughts and opinions on technology, society, and life in general, plus a dash of team parties, and books read etc.
The final caveat being that the only connection between Talisians and Talis is that we all just happen to work there, any opinions expressed in personal blogs are just that, personal.
Of course if you want your blog included in Talisians, you could always see if there is a place for you at Talis.
(Photo taken by badbrother displayed in Flickr)
Posted by Richard Wallis at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
12 January 2007
What's in the box? - A Library System!
A few days back Bess Sadler, metadata / systems librarian at the University of Virginia, in her role as co-chair of eIFL (electronic Information for Libraries) had a go at writing her first press release eIFL-FOSS and “Library-in-a-box” want to make open source library systems accessible to all. (You would never have guessed it was her first one)
eIFL’s Free and Open Source Software for libraries programme (eIFL-FOSS)... ...has decided that their first project will involve helping eIFL libraries transition to the use of open-source ILS products. This transition will enable libraries to stop paying the often crippling software licensing fees they currently pay to vendors, and instead keep this money in their local community, using it to build local expertise in software development and maintenance. By transitioning to open source ILS products, the hope is that eIFL libraries will receive better support, spend less money, and be better able to design their own localized interfaces and training.
One major step on the road to the adoption of open source ILS products is to make open source integrated library systems easy for libraries to install. Although there are currently at least two open source ILS products that meet most of the needs of eIFL libraries, these products are currently fairly difficult to install. EIFL-FOSS proposes to package these ILS products into an easily distributable CD-ROM to be called “Library-in-a-box.” Modeled on the successful “NGO-in-a-box” (http://www.ngoinabox.org) product built by the Tactical Technology Collective (http://www.ttc.org), Library-in-a-box will choose the most appropriate open source ILS solutions available and develop easily installable software packages for each, along with training and documentation to help eIFL libraries implement the software. EIFL-FOSS will soon be asking for proposals from eIFL member libraries to become pilot participants in the testing and implementation of Library-in-a-box
As well as Press releasing about it Bess, is presenting a session on it at the upcoming Code4Lib 2007 conference in Athens, GA. at the end of next month. Where incidentally you will also find me presenting a session.
I see eIFL Library-in-a-box initiative an excellent one, using Free Open Source Software (FOSS) to help libraries that could not contemplate investing in a commercial ILS.
Just like lunch there is no such thing as totally free OSS, taking in to account time and people's effort in setting up and running it. The “Library-in-a-box.” approach will go a long way to reducing those costs and overheads for the target community of small and developing libraries.
So once you have got your Library out of the box and up and running, what will you need next - data thats what! Fortunately the conversations around Open Data in the library community are also moving in the right direction to help these libraries that could not contemplate huge subscription fees to take advantage of commercial data services. It's not just bibliographic data, I'm sure that the Library-in-a-box team will take account of proposed initiatives as Open Book Cover Images that Pegasus Librarian reported.
So congratulations Bess, not only on your press release but also on the potential of what will be in the box. I look forward to your Code4Lib presentation.
(Photo taken by photobunny displayed in Flickr)
.Technorati Tags: Talis, Library 2.0, Library-in-a-box, FOSS, OSS
Posted by Richard Wallis at 04:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Open Data progress
At last... a little progress.
Next stop, the Ordnance Survey.
How long, I wonder, can libraries continue to half-heartedly expose the content of their catalogues?
Technorati Tags: Free Our Data, open data, Talis
Posted by Paul Miller at 02:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
11 January 2007
It all starts to make sense
A year ago, I conducted a podcast interview with the very interesting (and great to watch) Dick Hardt. Dick is CEO of Sxip Identity, one of several companies competing for mindshare in the increasingly important online identity management space.
A week ago, Richard blogged about OpenID;
“an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity”
Today, Sam Sethi blogged about Sxipper;
“One Firefox plugin that came out recently from SxIP called Sxipper brings the whole OpenID capability to life. I simply downloaded it and then entered my existing OpenID details into sxipper and it takes care of the rest working very much like the autofill feature on the Google Toolbar. i.e it pops up when it thinks I needs its help to login to website or fill in forms with my personal details.”
I just downloaded it, and shall be seeing how well it works to help manage the way in which I declare my various (personal, corporate, professional, etc) personas to the Web. I may not like being portrayed as a dog (why, Dick, why?), but the tool certainly looks to have potential.
Although a conversation around the kettle this morning (it's January; “water cooler conversation” migrates to the kettle) makes me wonder how big a market there is for managing diverse identities. As Bill Thompson noted on the BBC site last week, users of sites such as MySpace seem to discard their identities with abandon. Maybe they don't want more than one at a time, and maybe they don't want to invest too much in it?
I may actively want to maintain different facets of myself online, and I may want to manage those relatively painlessly. Am I an edge case, an early adopter of some sort, or one of the masses?
Technorati Tags: Identity 2.0, Vecosys, sxip, sxipper, Talis, web services
Posted by Paul Miller at 12:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A Vendorless conversation
It started a week ago when Paul Miller speculated about the motivations behind the proposed purchase of SirsiDynix by Vista Equity . Paul's thought processes were prompted by Andrew Pace's coverage of the announcement (pdf) which was released around the festive holiday.
Paul's musings about the different priorities brought about by the various ownership models at play in today's library marketplace make interesting reading.
In the comments to his post Paul was admonished by Kathryn Greenhill for leaving the Open Source options out of his analysis. There then develops an interesting conversation between the two that is well worth a read.
Talking of conversations, get yourself signed up to the NGC4Lib (Next Generation Catalogs for Libraries) mailing list. Well worth joining to listen in on insightful discussions around the next generation library catalog and associated library stuff. (Archives available here)
Coinciding with the conversation on Paul's Panlibus posting, Eric Lease Morgan started a NGC4Lib thread with the subject 'mergers and acquisitions'. This thread has been actively contributed to for several days, and even spawned a follow up thread 'Commercial Open Source Software' - more of which later.
Some thoughtful quotes from the mergers and acquisitions thread:
If we were to leave it up to the ILSs, there would be no next generation library catalog. In my experience, for us to be able to integrate any of the interesting 'social' or 'web2' characteristics into our catalogues we will have to pay through the nose. I know this from experience. ILS vendors won't ever solve all of our problems. It is a small market, compared to other areas of business. The current shakedown was inevitable.
David Kane
After 9 years in industry I try to take people at their word; I keep my ears open and my mouth shut (well, most of the time). As for the truth of a situation, it is usually right in front of us, is it not? Its an open secret that the ILS marketplace has collapsed. The market has decided that there were too many vendors and too many products. Vendor consolidation has proceeded apace; product consolidation is about to proceed apace.
Mark Andrews
Luckily we now have both Koha and Evergreen, so the proprietary big boys can't have it _all_ their own way any more. Yes, there are reasons (both good and bad) why some libraries will continue to prefer a proprietary solution over an open-source one, even when the open-source solution is technically superior. But the numbers of such libraries will surely decrease: those proprietary ILSs that survive will have to do so by straightening up and flying right.
Mike Taylor
My prediction is that these big boys won't have finished integrating all of their acquired systems before a really strong open standards / open source community develops with a strong emphasis on a modular approach to building library solutions, such as could be provided by Talis.
David Kane
OSS is not without metrics, and adopting or rejecting Open Source does not have to be a throw of the dice.
Art Rhyno
I could quote loads more, but hopefully that lot will encourage you to read it yourself. Lorcan Dempsey has previously shared this concern:
It is surprising to me that there is not more discussion in the library community about the structure of the industry which supports it.
The comments to Paul's posting and this NGC4Lib thread seems to dispel my assertion early in the thread that the library community does seem averse to discussing commercial issues, which can only be healthy and welcomed.
Librarians have something to say, members of the Open Source community have something to say, we at Talis have opinions on the subject, even Lorcan Dempsey thinks there should be discussion about the LMS/ILS supply industry. - So why is there such a deafening silence from the rest of the vendor community? Has nobody got, or allowed to have, any opinions on the industry they work in and the upheaval it is going through.? There must be someone with something to say. - I'm sure the community that depends on the products they supply will be very interested to hear from them.
(Photo taken by ehrgeizier displayed in Flickr)
Technorati Tags: Talis, Library, Cataloging, Library 2.0, Web 2.0, Vendors, SirsiDynix
Posted by Richard Wallis at 08:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
10 January 2007
Closing web sites to make access to information easier
To quote the report - Government to close 551 websites - on the BBC News Site:
Hundreds of [UK] government websites are to be shut down "to make access to information easier" for people.
Of the current 951 sites, only 26 will definitely stay, 551 will close and hundreds more will be reviewed.
Instead government information online will be streamlined through two main sites - Directgov and Business Link.
In the Government Press Release on their progress report on ‘Transformational Government: enabled by technology’ they say:
Use of Government IT has now reached a critical mass and ordinary citizens are at the heart of this new way of working. Learners have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of technology investment.
Not normally a trumpet blower for the British Government, I do welcome this blast of common sense that seems to be emanating from some of it's web-aware members. At last the penny has dropped that the ordinary citizen has very little idea of the internal structures of, and relationships between, government departments and their responsibilities. Traditionally these structures and responsibilities have enforced a maze of different access points to government services on to a bewildered and confused public.
So a couple [is that still one too many? - or am I being a bit uncharitable] sites to visit to get to all national government services and information. If they are to their word of their report this move towards 'supersites' should be welcomed.
The next trick will be to get the other 400 plus local government organizations to get their act together in a similar way.
Not being sure of the 'shifted by Christmas holidays' day for my refuse collection, I thought I would demonstrate to my family the power of the Interweb in rapidly obtaining answers to such simple questions. My first try was the site for the County Council that covers my area. That resulted in finding out that refuse was actually the responsibility of my District Council - interestingly they only provided telephone numbers for these councils, a web link would have been 'really' handy at this point. The District Council site then informed me that they had delegated it to a sub-contracting commercial company, and it was their website that finally gave me the information I needed. So I got what I needed, but not a very impressive demonstration. Where I live should not impact where and what questions I ask. OK the answers may well be locally based, but people would be better served by a local government supersite - or better still why, for citizen communications, does there need to be a local/national differentiation?
Of course there is a lesson for libraries in this, as demonstrated by looking at what people type in to OPAC prompts. Dave Pattern's recent posting on failed searches gives an interesting insight to this - 'renew' and 'metalib' being numbers five and six in the hit parade of failed OPAC keyword searches. Do they think it is an OPAC or a library help system? - should it have to matter in an ideal world?
How many library sites assume that it's users have an understanding of which of the array of available sources it provides access to will contain the information they are trying to discover? How few actually do? How many would assume that it was the job of the library to hide all that complexity from them?
Answers on a postcard, or blog comment if you prefer......
(Photo taken by powerbooktrance displayed in Flickr)
Technorati Tags: Libraries, Government
Posted by Richard Wallis at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
5 January 2007
Will this one be the right ID
OpenID, to quote the web site, is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.
OpenID starts with the concept that anyone can identify themselves on the Internet the same way websites do-with a URI (also called a URL or web address). Since URIs are at the very core of Web architecture, they provide a solid foundation for user-centric identity.
By OpenID-enabling a web site it can accept your login credentials from your chosen OpenID Provider (which could even be your own system). The outcome being that if all sites that you use were OpenID enabled you would only ever need to use one set of credential to login to all of them - the Holy Grail of Internet - no more notepad documents or whatever to keep track of all those account names and passwords!
To find out more try this 5 minute informative screencast on Simon Willison's blog, and Wikipedia.
I'm getting an attack of Déjà Vu whilst writing this [no not the movie which looks fun by the way, or the or the fascinating the web as we remember it site that I tripped over whilst looking up the term]. We been here before. Remember the launch of Microsoft's Passport, or i-Names, or our first Talking with Talis podcast with Dick Hardt, Founder and CEO of sxip Identity.
These and many other peaks of web excitement over the last few years have tried to address the tricky problem of trying to tell all the sites on the web who you are in a secure, reliable, and trusted way. Testament to this so far intractable problem being the way that so far nobody can even agree a standard scheme for what a password prompt will accept - I have yet to work out a password which will satisfy the criteria for upper/lower alpha/numeric min/max length on all the sites I visit. (And it drives me wild!)
All the initiatives to provide a solution for a single shareable identity, rely upon the fact that some central web presence, that all the other sites will reference, will hold your actual credentials. This is not necessarily a single central source, OpenID and others envisage that you could choose from many.
From my point of view this is the problem for all of them. Passport failed to take off because of this - 'Let Microsoft become the arbiter of all Internet identity - Yeah right!!" Others have tried to avoid this by distributing the ability to host these identity stores across many organizations, but the fundamental problem still remains - trust. Who is going to trust some third party to hold your identity or to provide validation of an identity for login and or single sign on functionality. A service provider may trust an organization like a bank, but would you want your bank acting as the validater of your ID - what happens when you go overdrawn? An individual may trust an open source community site, but would a service provider?
I wish OpenID, which builds on much that has gone before, well but I have a feeling that even this will not gain critical mass. I wish I did know the answer - I could put my feet up and retire on the proceeds! But brains far bigger than mine still don't appear to have found this particular silver bullet.
Pessimistically I think there is a possibility that this will not be solved in a globally accepted way for a long long time or until we all get fitted with a personal MAC Address at birth. The present technically unsatisfactory situation is, unfortunately, just good enough to enable the wheels of Internet commerce to keep turning. If we could find a way to make the acceptance of something like OpenID a business critical issue for the likes of Amazon, eBay, and the rest, well things may well be different.
Afterthought
Of course Libraries are universally trusted organizations which are used to handling peoples identity information. Now what if we could some how enable all those borrower/patron records to be used to underpin something like OpenID, that might create a critical mass of data that would provide some momentum. Problem currently is that there is no standardly implemented way to get at that information - same old [library] story - what we need is a Platform!
Posted by Richard Wallis at 04:53 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
3 January 2007
Are libraries really of interest to venture capitalists?
Skirting a worrying temptation to wonder why we never specify which kind of new year we're talking about unless referring to the Chinese one, Happy New (Gregorian?) Year from all at Talis! And now back to the point...
In another interesting post to his Hectic Pace blog, North Carolina State University's Andrew Pace takes a look at last year's announcement (PDF) of the proposed sale of the world's biggest library systems vendor, SirsiDynix, to (relatively!) small San Francisco venture capital firm Vista Equity.
Sat, as I am, within a company owned by its employees and (some) customers, it can be interesting to muse about the different priorities brought about by the various ownership models at play in today's library marketplace, and maybe I should blog some of our internal discussion around that at a later date. Simplifying greatly, and in the context of the SirsiDynix announcement, I can see four broad types of library systems company;
- 'membership' organisations like OCLC, formed at a point in time to address a shared set of problems with and on behalf of that membership. Although clearly important to the sector, even a cursory glance at such things as assets and operating practice quickly shows that the line between 'magnanimous cooperative' and 'evil vendor' is a somewhat fuzzy one;
- commercial organisations like Talis, owned by some combination of their staff, their management, and third parties (often customers) with a vested interest in the success of both the company and the sector within which it operates;
- commercial organisations like SirsiDynix, Ex Libris, or Endeavor, wholly or largely owned by venture capital firms for the purpose of achieving some short (Seaport Capital, owning about 80% of SirsiDynix ahead of this latest transaction, might fall into this category) or medium term financial return on their investment;
- commercial organisations like Extensity, a small part of some larger organisation with priorities and objectives external to the library sector.
There are, of course, pros and cons to each approach, and libraries should undoubtedly be asking harder questions than some have been when selecting a partner for what will hopefully prove to be a mutually beneficial long term relationship. Switching from one library system to another is a painful, expensive and protracted process, so surely the last thing that any library wants is to go through all of that pain only to see some unexpected merger forcing them down an 'upgrade' path to a product that they didn't select, or to find some promising or essential development project axed by an outside management team parachuted in to maximise the realisation of assets for the latest VCs to pick up the ball.
As Lorcan Dempsey has suggested in the past (and as Andrew picks up on),
“It is surprising to me that there is not more discussion in the library community about the structure of the industry which supports it.”
Turning back to the SirsiDynix move, the 'interesting' bit is actually right at the end of their release;
“The deal is expected to become final in mid-January following a regulatory review. Terms of the agreement were not released.”
That final sentence isn't at all surprising, but it will only be when those terms do begin to become apparent that we'll really know what this is all about. How many of the current Management team will be allowed to stay? Indeed, how many of the current Management team will be allowed to leave (should they want to) over the next 9-12 months or so? How open will this particular set of VCs be to injecting new resources into the company? Are they in it for the short, medium or long term? Are they after a safe investment, or are they prepared to take some risks? Do they want to grow the business or harvest it? How much day to day control do they want? Do they see synergies with other parts of their portfolio (I can see one or two minor opportunities there)? Are they in a position to arrange a union that capitalises upon broader changes in the education sector, brokering or forcing marriage with a Blackboard or equivalent?
Any of these - and more - are possible. Some are more likely than others, but we really won't know until some of the dust settles in San Francisco, in Huntsville, and even in Menlo Park.
And, of course, when OCLC buys III all bets are off.
Just to finish off, I found the language used in the press release interesting; “investment partnership” and SirsiDynix' “agreement to be acquired” are interesting euphemisms for “our current owner just sold us to some new owner, and we hope it'll be ok”. I hope it'll be ok, too.
Update: John Fink just posted a link to this graphic to the Web4Lib list. Although clearly US-centric, it visually demonstrates the consolidation in this market. How well, I wonder, do all of the survivors fit my four categories?
Technorati Tags: Andrew Pace, Libraries, SirsiDynix, Talis
Posted by Paul Miller at 03:28 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
