Over on our Xiphos blog, I’ve just published a podcast conversation I had with Herbert van de Sompel earlier this week.
It’s a nice example of the synergies between issues discussed here on Panlibus and those we’re exploring within Project Xiphos. Have a listen, and see what you think.
Attendees at tomorrow’s JISC Conference will get their first sight of our latest project, Project Xiphos (look in your Talis-branded bag if you’re at the event).
Project Xiphos represents an interesting fusion of much of our thinking over the past few years, from Library 2.0, to Open Data, to the Semantic Web, to an open and web-scale Platform upon which we and others can build compelling and cost-effective applications. All this, and more, comes together in Project Xiphos.
Here, we’re rethinking the ways in which people, resources and the connections between them can be put to work in delivering a compelling blueprint for next generation systems that extend across those silos we today call libraries, repositories, virtual learning environments (or course management systems) and more. By placing the individual at the heart of the system, and drawing upon their network of peers, resources, connections and leads we are able to unlock the potential locked up inside so many of our institutional systems.
Project Xiphos is just beginning. We welcome your engagement and your participation, whether in person on 10 June, via the new Project Xiphos blog, in email, or however you feel best able to share.
In our latest podcast I talk with Larry Johnson, Alan Levine and Rachel Smith of the New Media Consortium. We discuss the 2008 edition of their Horizon Report, exploring both their methods and the wide-ranging implications for Higher Education of their findings.
During the conversation, we refer to the following resources;
This conversation was conducted using Skype on Wednesday 26 March, recorded with Ecamm Network’s Call Recorder for Skype, and edited on a Mac with Garageband.
Technorati Tags: New Media Consortium, Horizon Report 2008, Semantic Web, Talis, Talking with Talis
Former colleague Andy Powell is always good value, and this recent blog post about his trip to Melbourne is one small demonstration of why I will always listen to him.
It’s hard to nod vehemently in a blog post, and as it’s the school holidays in this part of the UK, screaming ‘Yes’ at the computer just results in children banging down the door to see if I’m ok…
So let me draw out three short snippets…,
“…our current preoccupation with the building and filling of ‘repositories’ (particularly ‘institutional repositories’) rather than the act of surfacing scholarly material on the Web means that we are focusing on the means rather than the end”
“…our focus on the ‘institution’ as the home of repository services is not aligned with the social networks used by scholars, meaning that we will find it very difficult to build tools that are compelling to those people we want to use them”
“…that the ’service oriented’ approaches that we have tended to adopt in standards like the OAI-PMH, SRW/SRU and OpenURL sit uncomfortably with the ‘resource oriented’ approach of the Web architecture and the Semantic Web”
…comment briefly…
Our current approach, fundamentally, is totally, completely, utterly wrong, isn’t it?
…and then send you off to read the whole thing. Off you go…
Technorati Tags: Andy Powell, open access, open data, repositories, Talis
I was in the Norwegian capital Oslo yesterday, at the invitation of BIBSYS.
Faced with the same global trends and disruptions as the rest of us, BIBSYS have been holding a seminar on The Future of academic libraries - the road ahead. They’re interested in understanding the ways in which libraries and library systems must adapt, and invited a range of speakers to share our views.
My own concerns go wider than the library, as we at Talis have been engaged in thinking about implications for the wider educational institutions of which libraries are only one part. The organisational divisions that we create, and the dated assumptions that are so often brought to thinking about how ‘learning’ should be ‘delivered’ to students appear ever more questionable as we look closer and closer. Considered in amongst the wider economic, social and technological trends acting upon those institutions and the cultures to which they belong, the need for change is soon apparent. Lessons learned in economics and through the evolution of the Web also offer pointers in viable and intriguing directions that build upon notions of connectivity and openness.
In speaking yesterday, I built upon some of the ideas that my colleague, Richard Wallis, shared in his Talis Insight presentation last November.
My own slides from Oslo are available here, and this is a theme that we shall be exploring further during the year.
Technorati Tags: higher education, Semantic Web, Talis
I read the following with some amusement;
“Dear Librarians in Asia and the Pacific Region:
The OCLC Asia Pacific office will be closed Wednesday, July 4, 2007, in observance of INDEPENDENCE DAY holiday.
Sincerely,
The staff at OCLC Asia Pacific
OCLC Asia Pacific
6565 Kilgour Place, Dublin, Ohio 43017-3395 U.S.A.
E-mail: asia_pacific@oclc.org
FAX: 1-614-764-4331
Telephone: 1-614-764-6341
http://www.oclc.org/asiapacific/en/”
At first, I was bemused that ‘librarians in Asia and the Pacific Region’ should be inconvenienced by a holiday in the United States; a holiday for which the country concerned was not even specified. Believe it or not, other countries around the world also celebrate similar days on different dates.
Then it struck me that this was absolutely brilliant; employees of global organisations should automatically get all the holidays for every territory in which they operate.
I shall, henceforth, be celebrating every holiday I can find and suggest that my internationalist colleagues in Ohio do likewise in order not to appear parochial, insular, or (surely not) insensitive to international niceties.
I guess I’d better go home then…
Today’s image, CC-licensed on Flickr, is by Janusz Leszczynski.
In a press release issued today, OCLC announces that it has subsumed the remainder of European ILS vendor, Pica.
“OCLC acquired 60 percent of the Pica organization in 2000. Today’s purchase of the remaining 40 percent in OCLC PICA completes the acquisition of shares. Rein van Charldorp will remain in his current position as Managing Director of OCLC PICA.”
OCLC, famously proud of its nonprofit credentials (and tax breaks), has struggled to balance its traditional role as a predominantly US-focussed membership cooperative with a desire to generate revenue as an increasingly ambitious provider of global online services.
Dublin’s ability to hold the partially owned Pica at arms length has provided a useful Chinese wall until now; Pica did the ‘dirty’ commercial business and channelled OCLC’s absorption of Sisis, Fretwell Downing, etc, whilst OCLC could argue that the cooperative itself did not engage directly in such activities.
That is no longer the case, and we can only assume that OCLC sees sufficient value in that last 40% of Pica for it to be worth risking the ire of librarians such as those at ALA last week who seemed increasingly prepared to question the relationship between OCLC’s non-profit and community good works on the one hand and its less philanthropic attitudes to control of data and increasingly commercial practices on the other.
In Europe, too, we may see existing customers of ‘European’ Pica looking askance at the ‘American’ company to which they now pay money…
The Press Release quotes OCLC President Jay Jordan as saying;
“Completing the acquisition of OCLC PICA will help facilitate the deployment of OCLC library services worldwide… This is the next logical step in a process that has fostered tremendous cooperation between Stichting Pica and OCLC over the past seven years. OCLC and OCLC PICA will be better positioned to deliver a network of integrated global, regional and local services to libraries worldwide.”
OCLC has great reach, and a real opportunity to transform the way in which libraries and their resources are exposed online. Much of that activity, to date, has been far less open than it could and should be. Does assuming total control over the least open part of the OCLC family suggest that the wayward child is to be forcefully turned toward openness, or are we peering over the edge at an abyss that seeks to swallow all of us and our data, only to sell it back to us a piece at a time?
Today’s Financial Times includes a special supplement, Understanding the Culture of Collaboration, much of which is reproduced online for those who don’t have the physical paper land on their doormat each morning…
“The conventional view that business is all about competition is being challenged by the idea of collaboration, as companies look to find ways of exploiting the power of partnership.”
There’s even an article on the role of ‘new technology’…
At Talis, we fully recognise that the bad old days of lock-down, lock-in and beating the ‘enemy’ at all costs are (thankfully) on the way out. Collaboration, cooperation, sharing and openness must be our watch words moving forward. It takes two to tango, though, and it never ceases to amaze me that so many representatives of our potential partners in this space appear unable to comprehend any model other than the one in which they compete and -necessarily - win or lose.
Today’s picture is by Rochelle Hartman, CC-licensed on Flickr.
Technorati Tags: Cooperation, Financial Times, Participation, Talis
My colleague Rob Styles and I are just back from our trip to North America. Whilst there, we dropped in to the ALA conference in Washington DC for a few days, and Rob participated in a panel session convened for ALA by NCSU’s Andrew Pace [blog] and Vanderbilt’s Marshall Breeding.
The panel, “Speaking Technically: a conversation about cutting-edge library automation and technology with Andrew Pace and Marshall Breeding”, took place on the main exhibition floor at the Washington Convention Center and was over-attended with people spilling out of the allotted space into the surrounding exhibition proper.
As well as Rob, panelists comprised Oren Beit-Arie of Ex Libris, Jabe Bloom of TLC, Taco Ekkel of Medialab, Betsy Graham of III, Robin Murray of OCLC and Berit Nelson of Sirsi Dynix, and our two moderators had made a point of keeping panellists in the dark as to the questions in the hope of eliciting fresh, honest, and personal rather than corporate responses. In checking my spelling of names and affiliations for that last sentence, I found it interesting that throwing the search “’name’ blog” into Google only produced an authored blog in one instance; Rob’s. I’m not sure whether that says anything or not…
The first question, to all of the panellists, was (and I’m paraphrasing, as I’m out of practice at writing quickly and a founder member of the (large) population of individuals who struggle to read my handwriting…) “In the business of library automation, how do you balance business and technical considerations in reaching a decision?”
Jabe took the first stab, stressing the importance of the total cost of ownership (rather than the up-front cost of purchase) in purchasing decisions. He highlighted the need to apply the most appropriate technology in order to manage costs over the lifetime of an application, before talking about the value of user-centred design in ensuring that the tool fits the job rather than the other way around.
Robin Murray said that everything comes down to balancing considerations of cost, value, and time.
Taco said that Medialab “likes to do what libraries like to see”.
Berit talked about the need to continually respond to change, arguing that we cannot assume our legacy technologies and approaches to be the best solution moving forward. Berit went on to make an important point, asking where library systems fit within the ‘overall public interface’, and how well they succeed in opening up backend systems or integrating with alternative providers such as Medialab with Aquabrowser. Partnership, Berit stressed, can cost more than building it yourself, and the need to ship and locally configure every software update has a serious impact upon the speed with which any one vendor - or libraries in general - can benefit from innovation.
Rob talked about the need to change the technologies used in order to meet business objectives, or to shift the business in which you are working in order to take advantage of new opportunities.
Betsy talked about the need to watch Google, Yahoo! and other successful internet innovators.
Oren picked up on Rob’s points, and went on to sum up nicely by saying “A technology decision is a business decision.”
To my mind only Berit, Rob and Oren actually answered the question. Maybe the others said something profound which I missed. Or maybe I failed to accurately record the question, and they all answered the one that was actually asked…
Andrew and Marshall then changed tack, asking each of the panellists a question in turn.
First, to Jabe, “TLC focusses on public libraries, with separate systems for smaller and larger libraries. Why?”
Jabe’s answer suggested that the richer capabilities within their top-end products were too complex for use in smaller libraries that lacked the staff and budget to make best use of them.
Next, to Betsy, “III has stayed above current mergers and acquisitions in the sector. Their systems have, however, been accused of not being sufficiently open.”
Betsy agreed that III can be perceived to not be open, but argued that this was untrue. “We are completely standards based.” “III can run on Oracle, and the libraries can do what they like with that data.” “We hope to provide an api into the database with Encore.”
From where I was sitting, the muttering would suggest that many members of the audience shared in the ‘misconception’ to which Betsy referred.
Rob was up next, but I was concentrating too hard to remember to write the question down! Essentially, he was asked to explain what the Platform was about, which he proceeded to do. I know that ’superficial’ was a word used in the question, but Rob’s answer put paid to that particular association, and illustrated the ways in which third parties such as Aquabrowser are already enhancing their own products on top of the Platform.
Next, to Taco, “Aquabrowser is used because OPACs suck. How can Aquabrowser keep innovating enough to justify their additional cost as the ILS vendors themselves begin to develop their own OPACs along similar lines?”
With apologies to Taco (my note-taking was clearly a bit erratic at this stage…), I didn’t manage to write down what he said. I imagine that it was something along the lines of Medialab being small enough to remain nimble, and a stressing of the importance of listening to - and engaging with - customers and their customers in continuing to enhance products? Taco - feel free to correct me in the comments!
Next, to Robin, “OCLC is acquiring a lot of companies right now. How do you put the pieces together?”
Robin talked about fragmentation in terms of brand, supply and technology in the library sector, and argued the need for web-scale solutions which (he contended) only OCLC can provide. It wasn’t clear whether the web-scale brand should be ‘library’ or ‘OCLC’. I do also continue to wonder, as Robin has made similar arguments before, where we go with web-scale? Web-scale surely doesn’t have to mean what Robin seems to; a hulking great monolith of a system, competing head to head with the highly recognisable destination sites on the web. Web-scale can mean technologically robust and scalable, almost invisible, and designed in such a way as to integrate with local, niche, horizontal and vertical applications inside and outside the domain; enabling and facilitating the use of libraries, rather than creating a destination site, sucking data into it, and fighting to attract consumer eyeballs to The One Library.
Next, to Oren, “You’re maintaining both Aleph and Voyager, plus a load of standalone products. Where do you go now?”
Oren talked about the different roles played by Aleph and Voyager moving forward, and stressed the importance of finding the best products for the job.
To Berit, “Sirsi Dynix has a reputation - and a high profile - for talking about innovation. How does what Stephen Abrams says fit with what you do, day to day?”
Stephen is looking 18-36 months ahead. Whilst we sell products to librarians, they are used by your users who are also immersed in the communities that Stephen talks about. He helps us to bridge the gap and create products to reach out to those users.
Finally, to the whole panel once more, “Open Source has captured our attention, with implementations in Georgia and British Columbia and more on the way. Does this interest change anything?”
Oren argued that local implementation of open source and the buying of a commercial solution from a vendor was not actually a strict binary situation. Both, he argued, were viable solutions and it was down to individual libraries to select the best ‘product’ for their needs. Ex Libris “embraces open source”, but everyone needs to remember that costs include more than simply the lack of a license fee. Which solution will have the highest Total Cost of Ownership in each local situation, and which will best meet your needs? The answer will not always be the same…
Betsy noted that III make use of open source software such as Lucene.
Rob talked about the importance of making use of open source software to lower costs and benefit from innovation within a community, and stressed Talis’ ongoing activity within several open source projects where we continue to contribute to their codelines moving forward. We have also released some of our own products under open source licenses, and this will continue.
Taco made a great point, suggesting that Open Source was a distraction. We should be thinking far more broadly about openness across our data and systems.
All in all a great session, despite disappointing performances by some members of the panel. I hope Andrew and Marshall get approval to do this again, and welcome the avoidance of the usual corporate hype machine. Rob picked Robin Murray up on one of his points towards the end (Robin agreed that he perhaps hadn’t meant what he said), but it would be an interesting challenge to facilitate far more of that back-and-forth whilst preventing the session from degenerating into a slanging match.
Various organisations represented on the stage have fundamentally different views of the world, and of the ways in which they and libraries can, do and should fit within it. The vigourous agreeing with one another would make those who don’t know think otherwise.
Well done, Andrew and Marshall, and kudos to all who turned up on stage, despite the explicit removal of those traditional vendor comfort blankets; the pre-prepared answer and the ‘bought’ questioner.
And for any audience member who picked up something I missed, or any panellist who feels their point isn’t adequately represented above, feel free to comment below…
Technorati Tags: ALA, ala2007, Andrew Pace, Marshall Breeding, Talis
Given the recent flurry of blog posts exposing the schedules of those making the trek to Washington DC for the ALA conference, it’s now the turn of the Talis contingent.
Rob Styles and I will be heading over to ALA this year, on the back of some other bits and pieces we are to do on that side of the Atlantic. We’re due into National/Reagan about lunch time on Saturday 23 June, and then heading back home overnight on Tuesday 26th.
Other than heckling Rob in Marshall Breeding and Andrew Pace’s ‘Speaking Technically‘ panel, I’m not wholly sure what the mix of coffee, corridors, chat and session attendance will be, but look forward to finding opportunities to share ideas with a lot of people. My cell phone works in DC and, network permitting, we’ll also be visible on irc, skype, im, etc as usual.
See you there.
