Yes, I realize it’s been almost one full month since I posted anything but it’s been a busy time and it never hurts to save electrons.
ILS futures
Attended a full-day retreat yesterday, hosted by the Washington Research Library Consortium. The topic was “Next Generation Systems Architecture: First Steps.†I had a bit part on one of the panels (“Tech Trendsâ€) but wasn’t able to make the sort of contribution I hoped for when I agreed to participate. The leader of my panel was out of town in the weeks preceding the retreat and only gave me instruction on what to talk about approximately 30 minutes before our session began. So much for preparation.
Despite that, it was a generally useful meeting, both to try and align staff perceptions of user needs with the realities of the library software marketplace and to give voice to everyone’s sense of where current systems fail. Not surprisingly, most talked about moving to a different ILS to solve their concerns about the OPAC, proving once again that in the minds of all but technical services staff and circulation workers, the ILS is the OPAC.
I tried to make these few points:
The OPAC is no longer providing the sort of interface our users expect. It is still pretty great if you’re doing what’s called “known item searching†and you take the time to enter your query according to the system’s syntactical expectations and you’re a pretty good speller. Beyond that, it’s not very flexible, forgiving or fun.
But it is important to clearly separate discussion about the OPAC from discussions about the ILS. The two are on very different trajectories. There’s no real crisis in circulation and users aren’t concerned that our cataloging systems are falling behind. It’s the OPAC and the pressure from Google and the faceted catalogs of web-based merchants that we need to focus on right now. Unfortunately, there’s not a full-featured ILS out there that’s a compelling migration target—all seem to share a similar list of strengths and weaknesses at the moment. Fortunately, there are ways to fix the broken OPAC module without necessarily tossing aside one set of ILS headaches for another.
We are clearly moving toward a time when we’ll find our ILS has become the DLS (De-integrated Library System). The current ILS model (a set of software modules interacting with a common database) is in eclipse. The new model will be systems that expose their data as services, using interoperability to give the illusion of integration.
We should focus on fixing our OPAC issues (perhaps something like the Endeca parallel OPAC or maybe seek funding to help develop something) and recognize that we need not migrate to a completely new system for at least a few more years.
p.s., I didn’t offer any thoughts on the value of “tagging” in the OPAC but was all set to say it didn’t seem all that useful in this context. I don’t think you can invoke the benefit of the “wisdom of the crowd” thing unless the numbers in your crowd scale far beyond the number we see as users of our catalog. It could, of course, have value for a faculty member who wanted to tag a list of books with something like “ECON101Sec2” so it’s not a completely useless notion—unless, of course, he forgot to “untag” them when the course ended.
Screencasts on a Mac
Another option for those who say it’s too hard to do screencasts on a Mac. If you’re not able to shell out $69 for the excellent Snapz Pro X from Ambrosia Software, give iShowU from Shiny White Box a try. Registration is a much more reasonable $20.
update: Today (6/21/07) Ambrosia software released an Intel-native version of Snapz Pro X (2.1.0). Free ‘upgrade’ to registered users.
A couple of caveats: iShowU requires Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) and since the resulting video is rendered as you’re recording (unlike Snapz Pro which renders after you stop recording), you’ll benefit from a faster machine if you want high frame rate captures.
A few demo screencasts are shown on the ShinyWhiteBox website. In case you’re stumped by the narrator’s accent: New Zealand.
Presentations?
Maybe you have a Keynote presentation you’d like to convert into an enhanced podcast. Let me suggest you give ProfCast a try. I tested the program on a presentation I created a year or so ago and it worked flawlessly. I plan to register a copy if the need for podcast creation comes along (not a high probability in my line of work but I can see how this would be great for a librarian doing education or promotion).
A blurb from the ProfCast website:
ProfCast provides live presentation recording, synchronization of slides with audio, Keynote and PowerPoint support, RSS generation, and publishing support. All elements of your presentation, including slide timings, bullet point builds, and voice narration, are recorded.