Will integrated library systems ever be as cool as iPods?

Cooler than your iPod?Humming away in the background, performing all the routine tasks without which a library could not function, integrated library systems are very easy to take for granted. Yet they are frequently the library’s shop window, too ­ and recently they got a wake-up call from systems guru Marshall Breeding.

“How many of you believe your library automation system gives you everything you need?” he challenged at last year’s Talis Insight conference. “Is it cooler than your iPod?”

People rarely change their system supplier because of the complexities involved, he said. So does this mean they are stuck with inflexible closed legacy systems and few of the collaborative features that users take for granted on Amazon?

“There are some really old-fashioned looking interfaces out there, so I wholeheartedly agree,” says Penny Bailey of Bailey Solutions. Her company is developing a new Web 2.0 toolkit. “I don’t want to give away too many details at this stage,” she says. “But yes, we will be borrowing heavily from Amazon and eBay features where appropriate.”

Other suppliers are also rising to the challenge. Eos.Web has recently partnered with Syndetic Solutions to enhance its online catalogue information, and Softlink has introduced a Universal Server whose planned services include sharing of book reviews and resource ratings.

Question of scale
Talis’s solution is the Talis Platform. “Many of these social or active community-based facilities operate successfully only across groups of users far larger than a single library,” explains Talis’s technology evangelist Richard Wallis. “By utilising the ability to share and optionally combine data in a platform, social application services become not only possible and simple to implement, but are of a scale to make their data useful and representative of trends in grouping together a broad range of users.”

OCLC is relying on its WorldCat.org product to maintain its Web 2.0 credentials. An application programming interface (API) delivers web-based services that can be integrated into library solutions. OCLC’s Norbert Weinberger says that user options such as reviews, ratings, recommendations, collaborative filters, social tagging, RSS feeds and alerts are planned.

But Graham Beastall of Soutron reckons that this is “not really what librarians are saying they want”. With a strong legal clientele, his company has recently added document control functionality to keep track of versions and amendments. Finding the latest edition, in the right office, is the objective for his users, “not getting a message that says there are also 14 other legal references they might want to consult”.

One thing library system vendors can’t avoid is the move towards open systems.

Customers want to assemble systems from best-of-breed components, rather than stick with one monolithic system provider.

“We have partnerships ­ with Microsoft, with WebFeat, File Trail and Syndetic,” confirms Eos International’s Bernard Hunt. “The way Eos.Web is designed also means we use our web services tools to integrate with other systems.”

Softlink Europe director Iain Dunbar adds: “All new Softlink products are truly open system, allowing integration with a variety of other applications. The creation of standard web services is enabling better integration.”

Standard answers
But Wallis strikes a note of caution. “It is still early days,” he says. “The key to this is open interoperability standards, either official or de facto, supported by modules from both commercial and open source suppliers.”

“I can see why customers would want this, but I wonder how it could be achieved,” says Bailey. “If you make the modules standalone you lose the interaction.”

However, she does believe that more peripheral modules, such as federated searching or knowledge management, could be purchased from different suppliers.

Integrating local content with public domain sources is another coming development. Both Eos.Web and Softlink offer federated searching. Softlink also has secure intranet searching, while Talis is investigating provision of public domain data services via its Talis Prism 3.0 interface (currently primed for beta testing).

In the US, OCLC has recently concluded a pilot of WorldCat Local, its offering to libraries looking for a networked next-generation end-user environment. “A number of corporate libraries are using the portal solution from OCLC to integrate their information resources into a single point of access,” Weinberger reports.

However, there may be some doubt as to the effectiveness of such integration. A few of Soutron’s clients ­ mainly from the legal sector ­ are using federated search engines but, says Beastall, “some clients have voiced dismay and are not convinced by the accuracy of search results using this methodology”.

So will your integrated library system ever be as cool as your iPod? Vendors are certainly trying to make it so ­ but there may be a lot of legacy to be undone first.

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