I’m currently reading my way through the final draft of the OLE Project Final Report.  The one year Mellon Funded Open Library Environment (OLE) project which “convened a multi-national group of libraries to analyze library business processes and to define a next-generation library technology platform”

the project planners produced an OLE design framework that embeds libraries directly in the key processes of scholarship generation, knowledge management, teaching and learning by utilizing existing enterprise systems where appropriate and by delivering new services built on connections between the library’s business systems and other technology systems.

We at Talis, along with some 200 other organisations, participated in the process by feeding back our experiences in implementing live integrations between Library Management Systems and other institutional entities that the report authors recognise as being key to delivering a seamless workflow.  Our experience indicated that successful integration between systems is as much to do with local departmental motivations, understanding, and politics as it is to do with technology. This was discussed in more depth on the March Library 2.0 Gang Show with Tim McGeary from the OLE project and Talis’ Andy Latham  were guests.

The body of the report consists of many process model diagrams, describing the required interactions between library and other processes/components, which when brought together will enable the construction of library associated workflows for the next-generation library service that will utilise this next-generation library technology platform.

This first year project is in it’s own terms a success “The OLE Project met all of its objectives and was completed on time and within budget”.  One cannot deny the thought, effort, commitment and enthusiasm that has gone in to the production of this report.   Without rerunning the analysis they undertook, it would be difficult to criticise the model they have described.  The proof of the pudding of course will come in the next phase, when they move on from describing a new technology platform to start building it.

The planning phase of this project is complete. The next steps are to identify a group of build partners to provide investment funds and to develop and test the initial software. A build partner  can be an individual library, a consortium or a vendor.

The total partnership cost of the OLE Project over two years is projected to be $5.2 million, a figure that includes all programming effort as well as project management and quality assurance staffing. In addition to OLE Project costs, costs of participation would include some local staff, governance and travel funding. Project partners intend to contribute half of the OLE partnership costs and seek the other half from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Viewing the process diagrams in the report takes me back to 1990, in a snow covered hut in the grounds of the University of Birmingham.  I shared that hut for several weeks with Talis (then BLCMP) staff and a group of folks from a Dutch library system vendor (long since subsumed in to the OCLC global organisation) with the objective of designing the next-generation library technology platform.  Several years, and a few £ million in investment, led to the development a very successful library system from which the current Talis Library System, Alto, has since evolved.

There are many parallels between that 1990 development process and the road that OLE are about to embark upon, if their bids for continued funding are successful.  Not only that BLCMP was a library cooperative during that period, but also that we had the luxury of being able to step back from previous systems and start with a clean set of library process requirements. 

I wish the OLE project continued success.  Whatever achieved, I believe the exercise they are undertaking is massively valuable to the whole library domain. 

Will they be able to translate their clean [uncluttered by interaction issues with systems over which they have little influence, or uncoloured by local institutional inter-departmental politics, and ‘traditional practices] diagrams in to an installable, manageable, collection of components suitable to deliver format agnostic library services? – possibly.  Will they be able to do it in 2 years for a mere $5.2? – Experience tells me to be a little more sceptical on that last point.