The mind, especially in an early morning pre-caffeine state, often takes you off at unexpected tangents.  Whilst reading this press release from Ex Libris (more of which in a moment) I met a reference to EL Commons.  Immediately a vision of a dust covered spaghetti western bit-part player, complete with long moustache and sombrero, leapt in to my mind - he gets down from his horse and announces, in a bad Mexican accent "my name is El’Commons - you don’t mess with my library" 

It took at least two cups of coffee before that image dissipated so I could read the rest of the press release with any seriousness.

The press release itself was about Ex Libris launching it’s Open-Platform Program, reaffirming its commitment to openness as a core company value.

Ex Libris has translated its open-platform strategy into a program spanning three major areas of activity:

• Formalizing the process by which we design, implement, document, and publish our interfaces, to maintain consistency across all products and achieve comprehensiveness
• Increasing our emphasis on service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles in our future product designs, ensuring that our solutions will provide services as core building blocks for applications developed by us or by other parties
• Providing a platform that serves as a focal point for collaboration and as such, actively encourages and facilitates institutional and community initiatives to enhance our products or use them in ways we have not foreseen

Library 2.0 Gang member and Chief Strategy Officer at Ex Libris, Oren Beit-Arie, is quoted as saying "The open-platform strategy of Ex Libris is a different way of thinking, laying the foundation for a new business model in our industry"

The one thing that doesn’t feel quite right in what they say is "a platform that serves as a focal point for collaboration and as such, actively encourages and facilitates institutional and community initiatives"   This to me indicates an ambition for the Ex Libris systems, to be at the centre of institutional integration.  Firstly, in a loosely-coupled SOA architecture, is there such a thing as a centre; and secondly, in an institution are the library systems that centre?  I believe that the answer to both of these questions is "It depends where you are standing when you view the situation - in the library, maybe; anywhere else, probably not".

Nevertheless, open world thinking is what we all need, libraries will not survive in splendid isolation.  This is a theme that has pervaded several discussions I have been involved with recently - at the JISC/SCONUL Library Management Systems Study Consultation Event in London, I commented upon yesterday, and in the latest couple of Library 2.0 Gang conversations.

To help promote this new approach Ex Libris are going to be soon launching EL Commons -

"a collaborative Web-based platform hosting the Developer Zone, where community members can access documentation for the open interfaces, upload software components that they have written and want to share, and download components from other community members, adapting such components to their needs"

There is much to be lauded in this announcement, it’s a pity that this open community based approach to working with customers has taken so long to follow what we at Talis have been saying and doing for so long.  It is a far greater pity that others in our community appear not to be even thinking about thinking this way.

Flickr photo by mharrsch.

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Ed Summers has recently been active in exposing Library of Congress Subject Heading data as Linked Data using Semantic Web technologies and RDF, through his experimental service at lcsh.info.

In this conversation we find out how Ed’s career, not always on a traditional library path, has led him to his work in the Library of Congress, his pragmatic interest in things Semantic Web, and why he has needed to experiment outside of the LoC.

In this conversation we reference:

• code4lib 
• Library of Congress
• National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP)
• National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP)
• Chronicling America
• The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
• The BagIt File Package Format
• Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit (SWORD)
• Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)
• LCSH, SKOS and Linked Data
• lcsh.info
• Cool URIs for the Semantic Web
• How to Publish Linked Data on the Web
• Ed Summers’ web site: Inkdroid

This conversation was conducted as a Skype call on Thurday 26th June 2008, recorded with Ecamm Network’s Call Recorder for Skype, and edited on a Mac with Garageband.

 

 Ed Summers Talks with Talis [00:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Alejandro Garza over on the Stupendous Amazing Library blog, extrapolates the fact that there is very little partnership between library system vendors to conclude that they are not interested in interoperation between their systems.  He is picking up on extracts from the JISC/SCONUL Library Management Systems Study as commented upon by the Disruptive Library Technology Jester.

Coming from a history of integration protocols, in the library world, where they were more a framework for agreement than a standard, it is easy to assume that the only way to get two systems to talk is for their suppliers to establish a partnership to get it to work.  My least favourite standard NCIP is a classic in this regard. 

As I commented on the Jester’s post, the questions for the study were:

… in the present tense. Answering with ‘our products will integrate, etc., etc.’, would have no doubt drawn equal scepticism, but for different reasons.

The answers you picked out are symptomatic of an industry in transition. Transition from products without exception based on architectures that never envisioned light-weight loosely-coupled integration. Transition to a REST based service oriented architecture where integration between library and non-library applications should be simple and based on simple and open standards.

The “Do you have partnerships with other LMS/ERM vendors?” question in the survey demonstrates an attachment to traditional thinking towards integration. So far, with the traditional heavy-weight protocols we are used to in the library world, the only reliable way to get integration that works has been through a partnership between suppliers. Web 2.0 has demonstrated that with simple light-weight protocols, integration is possible without the need for commercial partnerships. There are many benefits that arise from partnerships, but they shouldn’t be a prerequisite for successful integration.

It is not all doom and gloom though. Initiatives such as the DLF’s ILS API defining simple REST base protocols that all vendors should be able to support, have started to gather momentum in the last few months. A momentum that appears to be supported both by vendors and open source groups.

Since I made that comment I attended a JISC and SCONUL Library Management Systems Study Consultation Event in London.  This event was a get together of stakeholders in the UK academic library community, which were joined by representatives from system vendors for the afternoon session.  For those with a sadistic streak in must have made an entertaining spectacle, watching six vendor representatives (Ex Libris, Infor, Innovative, OCLC, SirsiDynix & Talis) trying to squeeze their views in to 5 minute slots.  From most of those presentations and the discussion that followed, it is clear that the vendors are just as much stakeholders in this as the rest of the community.

I feel there is a refreshing openness in opinion and approach that is starting to spread through the conversations in the world of library systems.   This openness has been in high evidence in the recent Library 2.0 Gang conversations on ILS APIs and Bolt-on OPACs. 

It was a good meeting in London, I only hope that the organisers can keep the momentum going and build a community around the concerns of all the stakeholders, vendors included.  If the initiative started by the study falls back in to the traditional model of projects and reports that we are used to, it will be a massive waste of an opportunity.

Back to my original question - do we need partnerships to enable interoperability?  No we don’t.  With loosely-coupled integration, facilitated by web native light-weight open APIs, interoperability should ‘just happen’.  Vendors should, and are starting to be in the position to, say my systems are open for you to interoperate with - who ever you are, partnership in place or not.  This won’t happen over night, but we are already on a new path, with a healthy does of credit for the DLF’s leadership in giving us some direction.

Photo from Flickr by Just.Luc.

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Apparently SirsiDynix will be unveiling the snappily named SirsiDynix Enterprise at the ALA Conference in Anaheim.

To quote an announcement email that recently passed under my gaze, it is their….

… new state-of-the-art faceted search solution that empowers libraries to make collections more searchable and discoverable than ever before.

How does SirsiDynix Enterprise deliver this power? With fuzzy search logic technology never before available to libraries, simplified search interfaces, deep integration with current OPACs, and much more.

The fuzzy search logic technology never before available to libraries  comes from Brainware a sister company to SirsiDynix in the portfolio of Vista Equity Partners.

With the launch of Starship SirsiDynix Enterprise they are boldly going in to the universe of bolt-on OPACs, which was discussed in this month’s episode of the Library 2.0 Gang with amongst others participants from OCLC, Innovative, and Aquabrowser.    Practically everybody has now entered this space, previously only inhabited by Aquabrowser and a few open source projects.  Anybody who is anybody has a new OPAC sporting faceted browsing, new indexing, and the ability to be bolted-on to somebody else’s library system.

It’s early days in this market as Carl Grant, who was also on the Library 2.0 Gang this month, is saying we need to evolve from bolt-on towards plug-in.

Back to the SirsiDynix announcement - with the ‘Star Wars’ credits imagery, the Star Trek naming, and emphasising the fuzziness - I wonder what they will be wearing on the stand in Anaheim?

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It was remiss of me not to mention,Talking with Talis interviewee, Mark Leggott’s announcement that the University of Prince Edward Island had become one of the first academic libraries to migrate to the open source library system Evergreen.  Their appropriately named Island Pines OPAC can be checked out here.

This was news in itself but the fact that the move from SirsiDynix Unicorn to Evergreen only took them a month, was even more impressive. A hat tip to Mark and his colleagues.

I was reminded of my omission by this post from Dan Scott.  Dan assisted Mark and his team by creating a utility script that should be of assistance to SirsiDynix Unicorn or Symphony sites who are interested in exploring the possibilities offered by other library systems.  These scripts use the Unicorn/Symphony API.

Mark Leggott insisted that Dan retained copyright over the scripts created during the UPEI migration, allowing him to share those scripts in the appropriate avenues. To that end Dan has shared them under a GPL v2 license.

You would think that the scripts are now available to all, but you would be wrong.  As Dan says:

I am sadly (to the best of my knowledge) not free to simply share the script with anyone. Therefore, to gain access to the script you must be an API-certified Unicorn or Symphony customer.

So if you are an API-certified Unicorn or Symphony customer, you can download Dan’s work from the Unicorn API repository - the first .org for which I have ever needed a username and password to login, before I get to see anything.

This put me in mind of the old riddle - When is a door not a door? - When it is ajar! - When is Open Source not Open Source - when you need an account with a vendor to get at it.

Presumably Dan can’t share his work with the world so as to stop unscrupulous people from getting to know the secret sauce of the Unicorn API, and thus being able to export data  from their SirsiDynix API.    Of course if you are a Unicorn customer, with access to your ILS API, you will be able to login to sirsiapi.org and use Dan’s scripts to export your data.  So that is all secure then - isn’t it?

Reading that last paragraph again, I’m still not clear who is protecting what from whom so that they couldn’t misuse the information to extract data from their own ILS in a way that would be detrimental to anyone.  If anyone can enlighten me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Door ajar picture from Éamonn on Flikr

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We are always on the lookout for new user interface paradigms - remember that jaw-dropping moment when you first clicked-and-dragged a Google map.

I had a similar experience when visiting zoomii.com.  Basically a cool storefront for Amazon books, this exercise in creating a virtual bookstore where the books are displayed on [virtual] real shelves for you to browse.  By using the mouse to zoom in and out, and drag left, right, up & down, in a way that feels natural it is a totally different experience.

On arrival on the site you are presented with a video to watch, it’s only short so take a look to see how to make the most of your first experience at Zoomii Books.

From the Amazon Web Services blog, we are told that Zoomii has been developed and runs on Amazon EC2 virtual computer instances and uses Amazon’s S3 storage.  So not only a innovative way of browsing through books, but a great example of cloud computing.

Thinks… If they can build this to front the web services that Amazon provide, how easy would it be to produce a library version - all we would need is book jackets for all our stock.

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LibLime’s Evangelist Nicole Engard does an excellent job of not only capturing the content, but also the spirit of a conversation which opened the SLA Conference this weekend.

The conversation took the form of an interview of Dr. Vint Cerf, vice president and chief internet evangelist for Google, by television journalist Charlie Rose.

Go take a read.

As Nicole says in her conclusion:

When Stephen Abram came up after the talk was over, I have to agree with him, “O.M.G. don’t you feel smarter just being in the room with those two???”

Image of Dr Vint Cerf, from Nicole’s Flickr collection

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Library Technology Guides ‘Key resources in the field of Library Automation‘, created and edited by Marshall Breeding, has been doing an excellent job "providing comprehensive and objective information related to the field of library automation".    Along side the mass of information about library system companies, library catalogues throughout the world, next-generation catalogs, and an archive of press releases, Marshall’s GuidePosts blog is always a source of informative information about the library sector.

I am therefore very pleased to announce that the The Library 2.0 Gang series of podcast discussions has now joined the the array of resources available from the Library Technology Guides site.

My goal of fostering open conversations between vendors, their customers, and opinion formers in the library market, is closely aligned with Marshall’s objective delivery of information for the benefit of all.  The Library 2.0 Gang, and Library Technology Guides complement each other well.

This move will bring the lively conversations, that Marshall describes in his post announcing it, to a much wider audience.

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Following in the footsteps of their counterparts from Ex Libris, SirsiDynix, and Talis, Betsy Graham, Vice President Product Management for Innovative Interfaces, and Matt Goldner, Executive Director End User Services at OCLC, joined The Library 2.0 Gang for the June show.

The topic for the show is Bolt-on OPACs - search and discovery interfaces sourced from the open source community or vendors other than the incumbent ILS supplier.

Aquabrowser was the first commercial product of this type.  Taco Ekkel Director of Development for Medialab Solutions, the Amsterdam based company who produced Aquabrowser, is guest for the show.   

Matt reflecting on the OCLC experience with WorldCat Local and Betsy with Innovative’s Encore product, are joined by Andrew Nagy, lead developer on the VuFind project, Marshall Breeding, and Carl Grant, in a open discussion about  the way such products are evolving.

Apart from being an interesting discussion, it is yet another example of how key commercial players in the library systems marketplace are starting to open up and join a conversation about the opportunities for libraries, and their users, as well as the issues behind creating those opportunities.

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Karen Schneider has had a varied career in libraries, she is best known as an entertaining and informative speaker at library conferences, author of many articles, and prolific blogger as Free Range Librarian.

Karen recently announced another career move to become Community Librarian, for Open Source library software support company, Equinox.

We discuss her career and her view of libraries that have lead to her move to an open source organisation, and what Open Source has to offer.

This conversation was conducted as a SkypeOut call on Tuesday 27th May 2008, recorded with Ecamm Network’s Call Recorder for Skype, and edited on a Mac with Garageband.

 

 Karen Schneider Talks wit Talis [00:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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