ILS Symposium

Evergreen Wins Mellon Award

Congratulations to our friends at the Georgia Public Library Service Evergreen team, for winning the Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration on Monday! This is a well-deserved honor for their groundbreaking open source integrated library system. Elizabeth Garcia and Mike Rylander were presenters at the Symposium.

Full disclosure: Lamar serves on OCLC's Members Council, but I have known him for a lot longer than I have been at OCLC. Read more…

Marshall Breeding - The ILS: Past, Present & Future

Presentation by Marshall Breeding at the Symposium on the Future of Integrated Library Systems on September 13, 2007 in Champaign, IL, sponsored by Lincoln Trail Libraries System.

PINES and Evergreen

Elizabeth Garcia, PINES Program Director, Georgia Public Library Service
Mike Rylander, Vice President, Research and Design, Equinox
Open Source – The Good, the Bad, and the Wonderful

Garcia started the presentation out with a brief introduction of PINES. PINES is the Georgia library consortium. It has 47 public library systems and 270 facilities. There is one card for basically the entire state. The patrons can check out books anywhere, put holds anywhere, and return the books anywhere. Patrons can request books from other libraries at no cost, however, new books aren’t intra-PINES loaned for 6 months. This has been a state wide service since October 2004 and they have had 540,000 intra-PINES loans. PINES has consistent policies across the state, there is one, easy to use interface, it is centrally administers, all automation costs are paid for member libraries, all the training is done through PINES and there is a centralized help desk. The approximate cost per patron is 1 dollar, which is 1/10 of the cost if there were individual library systems.

PINES had an ILS, but was coming up on their contract end. Staff conducted a survey of the library automation marketplace. They were trying to decided if the software was driving the policies and procedures, or if it was the other way around. PINES didn’t have anywhere to go, they had outgrown their ILS. Staff got together and figured out what they needed and set up focus groups. They decided to develop their own ILS and they named in Evergreen.

Evergreen development began in 2004. They wanted to include search capabilities like the popular websites, Google like spell check and search suggestions, added content like book covers and reviews. They needed Evergreen to be able to grow as the amount of libraries and collection grew. Mike Rylander helped to explain the core technologies of Evergreen. Everything they used was open source:
    Database: Postgresql
    Programming Languages: Perl and C
    Web server: Apache
    Operating System: Linux
    Server Hardware: x86-64
    Messaging Core: Jabber
    Client Side Software: XUL
Since all these are open source, it is very cost effective, as well as being reliable and flexible.

Of course in all of this they could have used more staff, more time and more money. There were initial loading challenges and the first day didn’t go as smoothly as planned, but there was a lot of things that were done right. Garcia talked about how they involved their libraries in the process and that the libraries feel they have ownership. There were multiple dry runs and staff from all over was involved with the testing.

Where is Evergreen going from here? They want to add more self-service options – like online bill pay. They look forward to cooperative projects with university system libraries, as well as partnerships with libraries world-wide. New acquisitions and serials modules are in development. It is important to develop resources to make Evergreen a more community project as  well as make a foundation and users’ group.

Planning for the Future with Rob McGee

Rob McGee, RMG Consultants
Planning for the Future

McGee started with a very entertaining sermon-style history about the dark days of library automation. It was hysterical. The concept of the ILS was actually developed at the University of Chicago in the early 60s, the project was to develop an integrated bibliographic data processing systems for a large research library. Today’s ILS have been around for about 30 strong years, but there are many problems with the major enterprise. As for the future, McGee sees the need to go beyond bibliographic data, add metadata for e-resources, integrating the management of resources, managing all financial and human resources. We will see best of breed combinations vs. integrated systems. The ILS as a service is gaining popularity.

When thinking about the ILS it is important to have a strategic plan. You need to know what to spend you should spend your money on, and know what to consider in planning and procuring next generation integrated library systems. It is important to have a ten-year plan and have goals as well as know the problems that you are trying to fix. A lot of times there are conditions that trigger this planning. It is these conditions push people to open source, but it give libraries opportunity to do some good. There are many things to consider. It takes 2 years of planning to actually implement the change. It is necessary to do a gap analysis. Do you need an upgrade or a replacement?

There are possibilities and constraints to both upgrade and replacements. Upgrades happen within a given operating systems or compatible OS environments. The upgrades have to happen within certain hardware. It is fine to add a new interface to an old ISL. If you can change a few things and make them better, then you might not have to train as if you would if you were in a new ILS. If you decided to go with a new ILS you need to have a long range, comprehensive plan. There are three important questions to ask yourself: What are some of the technologies important to libraries? Which ones should my library implement? And Should my library partner with other libraries? You should think about integrating new technologies from outside and inside the library industry.

McGee concluded by showing the need for a multimedia management system. There is so much in the library land that we can add and use ILS as a solution. Technologies will be very key in this as well as collaboration between libraries and outside the library.

Chip Nilges: Libraries and Landscapes of the Future

Chip Nilges, Vice President, Business Development
OCLC, Online Computer Center

Nilges presentation, Libraries and the Landscape of the Future, explores user and resource environment, customer views and gaps and trends of information systems. There is a lot of activity around mass digitization as well as the sources from which users are getting their information.

There have been many changes in user expectations as technology has changed. The library is changing, My Space and Facebook provide new opportunities, people want customized information, and collaboration from a distancing is becoming a norm. What it boils down to is user environment vs. the resource environment.

The ILS is breaking up and new models and platforms are necessary. Social websites are playing an important role in how users access information. Libraries are still viewed as information sources, but remain less visible to users on the web, who use search engines. Most users go first to the search engines when starting their research. Nilges points out that this is where the gap is.

The industry has three trends: Getting into the flow, integrating resource management and outsourced logistics. Getting into the flow of information is important. The current OPACs weren’t built from the user up. It is important to rethink from the ground up with customer workflows as the focal point. Many libraries are trying to design their library portals to be more user friendly. The University of Minnesota used workflow analysis to improve the portal as well as integrate their portal into the larger university portal. Cuyahoga County Public Library changed their site and then did research to make sure that site usage increased. It had by a lot.

There are many personal bibliographic management services that support user workflow on published content. RefWorks, CiteULike, LibraryThing are great resources in which the future of ILS should be able to work with, as well as other formats. Library ELF is a service that allows tracking usage over multiple libraries. It would be a great thing to have bridges like this between libraries, as well as other outlets. The traditional ILS model is self-contained and locks content under authentication. Google on the other hand uses the syndication model. Here you start outside of the library portal and work from the bottom up, authenticating only where necessary.

The second gap is in integrated resource management. There are so many types of content and they are always evolving. The intercept each other and are all apart of the collection and need to be used.  Nilges talks about the British Library and how they believe that it is now connecting vs. collecting. Obviously, no one can collect all the materials, so connecting to others and sharing materials is important. The industry seems to be exemplifying this: there are many consolidations and new partnerships emerging, and the focus on integrated platforms signals a need to connect and collect.

The 3rd gap Nilges brings up is about outsourcing logistics. If more library functions can be outsourced then it seems more focus can be on users and what they want. Is the library of the future a huge hub where you request information and it’s delivered to your door the next day? What are these trends saying about the future? Nigles predicts that syndication will become critical, currently delivery will become more integrated, collection development will take place at the network level, and libraries will outsource more of what used to be core activities, via collaboration and commercial transactions.

Michael Norman: Cataloging and Metadata

Michael Norman is an Assistant Professor and Head of Content Access at the University of Illinois. His presentation today: Cataloging and Metadata: What Does the Future Hold? - Issues and Perspectives can be found at the following link: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/manorman/ILS.ppt

Norman’s presentation today is a conversation about the ILS. He talks about metadata and metasearching and the competition that is out there from Google, Amazon and Microsoft. He gives us examples of other libraries that are also changing their searches to make them more user friendly. He addresses issues with MARC and what needs to change in the upcoming systems.

UIUC Library has been working on many projects: Open Content Alliance, Illinois Harvest Project, etc. to give their users access to more information, but there are still a lot of problems with their catalog. Things like: difficult searching, not including all collections, hard to discern metadata are all problems that need to be addressed. Norman is sad to say that he almost wants to advise students to use other search methods and then come back to the catalog to see if the library owns it. Why are people searching elsewhere? Google, Amazon, and Microsoft Live offer key phrase searching, biographies, indexes, search inside the book, interlinking citations. It’s just a lot easier. The future of catalogs is already here and now, it’s in what these other places are doing.

Other libraries besides UIUC are also playing around with new catalogs. NCSU has developed the Endeca catalog. The interface makes what is available easier to see and is easy to use. Vanderbilt has Primo. It does a good job at pulling information form different collections and giving you relevant information. Oklahoma State is using Aquabrowser. It offers a cloud tag and has summaries and table of contents. UIUC has their information gateway. It is easier to search and does not take you to the catalog from the front end.

There are many positives of metasearching. It pulls metadata from multiple sources. It adds value such as Google maps and textual analysis. However, we are still cataloging for a surrogate record environment, but we need to move beyond that. These allow many possibilities. We all have access to the same sources. We can get ONIX feeds from the publishers. We can harvest information and add covers and reviews. With OCLC we can layer such applications as WorldCat Identities and authority control over our metasearches.

Norman says that Marc records still have a role to play, but they cannot be the only game in town anymore. It just isn’t flexible enough for today and it cannot accommodate much of the data we need to produce interconnectivity between sources. Metadata Encoding and Transition Standards (METS) offer much more flexibility. METS also provide a useful standard for the exchange of digital library objects between repositories.

There are a list of things that are ILS doesn’t do well right now: interconnectivity, citation, full text, other works about or cited within. The new systems need to be able to read MARC and XML, and be able to search across surrogate records. Users need to be able to easily identify different formats. The search sould be structured and strong and include key word indexing. It should be easy to determine how to get the information. The systems must be able to harvest data from multiple places. It should be easy to keep the information accurate and current, and be able to track changes mad. In order for all this to work, the processes need to be automated. The technologies to do all of this are already in existence outside of the library world. Libraries just need to collaborate with each other, and take the existing technologies and run with it.

Marshall Breeding Kicks Off the ILS Symposium

Marshall Breeding is the Director for Innovative Technologies and Research at Vanderbilt University. Today, he presented on integrated library systems (ILS). His presentation, The ILS: The Past, Present & Future, gave a brief history of the ILS, showed us were the ILS is today, and gave his opinions of where the ILS should go in the future.

Breeding presented the past of ILS as many different options for a pretty small group of people. There were many proprietary companies, libraries themselves were developing their own ILS, and OCLC was playing a large role. This was a time where the ILS came and went, and companies went bankrupt or just didn’t make any updates. This made choosing an ILS very difficult.

Speeding up to today, Breeding showed that most of the ILS come from the commercial sector, and from just a few major companies. It seems that now, we have the opposite problem; there are no enough choices. Since the narrowing of product options, and the lack of real updates in the last decade, the open source ILS has been on the rise. It seems that the level of innovation is falling short. Companies struggle to keep up with the ILS enhancement and there is pressure from libraries for more innovative products. OCLC isn’t really in the arena anymore, but are overlapping with companies that are. Breeding believes that though some libraries are looking at the open source options, that open source will not be mainstream until there are enough choices for competition and a well documented total cost of ownership states that can be compared to other vendor price quotes.

Breeding has many opinions and speculations of the future of the ILS. He sees the need for working toward a new vision of ILS since the ILS now is largely based on the workflow of 25 years ago. Much of the workflow is the same, but there have been some big changes, such as digital resources. Libraries are now demanding change and they want more openness and say in the ILS as well as open access to the data. Breeding sees a need to automate all aspects of library work, plus have a suite of interoperable modules, as well as a single point of management for each category of information. Since the current systems aren’t letting us do what we want, we need to redefine the borders of everything, especially the print vs. the digital. Breeding stresses the importance of separate front and back ends, and a service oriented architecture. He talks of how important it is to have enterprise interoperability, massively consolidated implementations, and to be aware of the global enterprise. The future of ILS is really in libraries not only working together, but working with other non-library, popular technology. Breeding talks about how revised assumptions of metadata are very important to the future of ILS. He ended with is the future of ILS in an evolution of a new ILS or the revolution of the old into today.