Camp topics

I'm interested in Open Source, the changing library marketplace (including the OPAC) and the next generation ILS. I think there is crossover between these topics--for example Open Source could be included in the discussion on the next generation ILS. And the changing library marketplace could be part of a discussion on OPACs and/or the next generation ILS.

Introduction

Hi, I'm Susan Foran, authority control librarian and cataloger at UW-Milwaukee Libraries. I'm interested in the future of cataloging and metadata. All those fancy public interfaces aren't much good if the data isn't accurate. I'm interested in next generation ILS and effective staff-side clients that make creating and maintaining the public interface possible.

Introduction

Mike Simpson, of UW-Madison DoIT ... boring details, personal philosophy, geeky technical rambling.

Hmmm, something specific to the camp: possibly original, merely the messenger.

Things won't stand still

One of the things I would like to discuss is the fact that the library software market-place will not stand still. Products are being developed so quickly that it makes it difficult to close the door. We thought we had evaluated all of the PAC Discovery tools out there, and now there are 3 more that we really should look at. It's not that we don't want to, but where do you draw the line?

When you apply this to Open Source ILS options, the problem is compounded.

Are others struggling with this issue?

Stephen Elfstrand and MnPALS: Introduction and Summary

Hi All,

I'm Stephen Elfstrand, Executive Director of PALS; the office supporting the MnPALS Consortium of Libraries in Minnesota. I've been here nearly a year now. Many of you know me from my previous position as Head of Systems and Circulation and the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. I'm looking forward to seeing you all again at WILSWorld.


MnPALS consists of the MnSCU public higher education institutions including State Universities, Community Colleges and Technical Colleges. Basically everything except the University of Minnesota. In addition, we have several state government libraries such as the DNR and Legislative Reference Library and we have several private institutions such as St. John's / St Ben's and Gustavus Adolphus. There are 63 libraries in all. We are currently using Aleph from Ex Libris,as our library management system and have we think the largest multi-ADM environment of any Aleph site. Since Ex Libris is working on a successor product to both Aleph and Voyager, we know there is a system migration in our future.

We are investigating several approaches for Next Gen Library Systems. An example is Open Source ILSs. We recently paid Equinox and LibLime to come to our office and do two-day seminars and go into greater detail than what is available in the 1-2 hour "gee-whizz" demos we've all seen at conferences. Day one was a technical seminar that discussed HW, system architecture, development environment languages. etc. We have actually installed both on servers here. Day two was a functional review of each system and a review of the development plans. Our conclusion is that neither are really ready for a major shared system for an academic library consortium that needs a full feature set that includes Serials, Acq, ILL, Course Reserves, booking, etc. but that they are both moving in the right direction and we are tracking their developments closely.

As for discovery layers we looked seriously an Open Source product that uses SOLR and Lucene: Fac-Bac-OPAC and got fairly far along with it. Later though we looked into VUFind and thought that it had a more advanced feature set, especially for Web 2.0 features, tagging etc. So we decided to go to that as a platform. We hope to release our VUFind for use by any library that wants to use it by August 15th.

We are also brokering OCLC WorldCat Local for several libraries, so I guess we are taking a "let a thousand flowers bloom" approach to the future,rather that trying to figure out what "The Best Way" is. It is significant in this regard that we have a wide variety of libraries and so there may not be one solution that works for all. We hope at a "reference work day" next spring we can have some of our members compare and contrast VUFind and WCLocal in terms of retrieval, display and user acceptance.

We are brokering OCLC Link Manager for some of our members but we are also looking into the CUFTS open source OpenURL linking product for future use. CUFTS is also working on open source ERM and federated search tools, which we find interesting. Since state budgets for higher ed are not growing, rather the opposite and of course library services budgets are tight as well, it is unlikely that we can afford to buy Metalib or Primo - types of products. Our conclusion is that we will have to grow our own to some extent if we want to offer any beyond-the-OPAC/LMS services to our members in the future.

Introduction

I'm Vicki Teal Lovely and I'm the Software Applications Supervisor at the South Central Library System (SCLS). We are a 41-member public library consortium using Dynix Classic. We've been investigating our next-generation ILS since 2000 and have had several false starts. We're closing in on making our final selection. But at the moment I'm very interested in Open Source. My specific areas of responsibility are Acquisitions and Serials, but I'm also concerned about all modules in general.