Talis, makers of an integrated library system (what we're calling the library catalog these days), are working on building RSS into their product. A brief white paper on their site outlines the uses they see for RSS as a patron communication tool. They are also looking at RSS as a simple way to pass information about, for example, new acquisitions, from the main catalog to local systems. (Via Tate's Space.)
[Sorry for the long gap between postings -- I was on vacation.]
RSS is coming to Innovative Interfaces library management system. The Shifted Librarian highlighted this news release late last week, noting that Innovative makes a mention of RSS on page 8 of their June 2005 INN-Touch newsletter:
Innovative will use RSS to support one-to-many communication, but in Release 2006 there will also be one-to-one support. Patrons will be able to get RSS messages as part of their My Millennium suite of personalization features. Timely messages such as "Materials due tomorrow" or "New item on hold shelf for you" will let patrons know about their interactions with the library more quickly than ever before. [...]
"Our users are familiar with RSS feeds as they stay current with the news or their special interest groups and it seems to us that the library should be part of that information stream," says [Yale University Law School's] Associate Director for Technical Services Mary Jane Kelsey. "The library will begin by providing time-sensitive patron notices in an RSS feed so our busy faculty and students can see the status of holds, recalls, and overdue materials at a higher level than their patron record. They will also have the option to integrate the library's feed into the Law School portal or subscribe with a local RSS reader."
Since my library uses Innovative, I'm particularly excited by this announcement. Kudos to Innovative!
The Ann Arbor District Library will be launching a new library catalog and associated services next month. According to Edward Vielmetti, a member of the AADL's technology advisory board, the new catalog will be integrated with library weblogs so that:
Additionally, Vielmetti says that the new catalog has "a module to (optionally) save your reading history and to save any searches, and to have the library automatically mail you when new books come in that match a search, kind of like an iTunes smart playlist for books." Whether this alert service will be available via RSS isn't clear; however, since the AADL will be running Innovative Interface's catalog, that functionality will be available with their next major release.
Too bad I moved from Ann Arbor last year -- just ahead of the innovation wave!
Jenny (the Shifted Librarian) brought my attention to the Seattle Public Library's collection of RSS Feeds. SPL has introduced a wide number of RSS feeds based on your library card and PIN. If you have an SPL card, you see links to the RSS feeds in your search results and account pages. If you're like the rest of us, you can only be envious.
Very nice, SPL!
Innovative Interfaces provides more details about their new RSS capabilities, according to a press release published earlier this week and discussed in an earlier RSS4Lib posting.
The new RSS tools will be included in the 2006LE version of Millennium, scheduled for release in late 2005. According to the press release, there are two significant RSS tools:
Perhaps I was too pessimistic in my previous post; if Millenniuim keeps to its release schedule, this will be available sooner than I thought.
Now if only Innovative would add an RSS feed to their press releases page...
Another LMS joins the RSS fray. According to an excerpt from a document on Polaris Systems' extranet, their forthcoming PowerPAC 3.2 release has some basic RSS features built in:
Another small step forward...
The Ann Arbor District Library has done it again -- in addition to all the other cool features their catalog/web site offers, it's now possible to do a search in the catalog and save it as an RSS feed.
Why do this, you ask? As soon as something new appears in the library collection that matches your original query, you'll know about it. For example, if you added this RSS feed to your aggregator, you'd be told whenever a new book appears with "broccoli" in the catalog information. (Amazingly, there are 13 items listed, of which six are neither cookbooks nor James Bond films.)
The savvy library patron will be jumping on new books even faster now.
Tim Spalding has upgraded LibraryThing to include a few RSS feeds (151,440, to be precise) for its online catalog. Feeds include books cataloged by each LibraryThing member, reviews by each member, reviews of your books, all books given a specific tag, and reviews of books with a given tag. Phew! Tim has been busy.
This type of activity would be great for a traditional library -- letting patrons see what other patrons are reading (assuming the patrons have opted in to the sharing of their reading lists). What might be interesting is to tell the catalog what it is you've read and then publish new books as you read them; others who have read the same books might be interested in receiving your newly-found books. This could even be done anonymously, if groupings of books read by the same people could be identified.
There's a new section on the LibSuccess wiki on "Examples of RSS from the Catalog." If your library's catalog is actively generating RSS feeds -- not just capable of it, but actually doing it -- add it to the wiki under the heading for your vendor.
Great idea from Jenny Levine.
This is the presentation I hoped to have in yesterday's keynote
Marshall maintains a list of who has what catalogs on his Library Technology Guides site.
Federated search systems: LibraryFind; dbWiz (Simon Fraser); Masterkey (developed by Index Data). masterkey.indexdata.com for a demo.
OCLC offers some open source software -- but not cutting edge stuff. Fedora is a major digital repository engine. VTLS Vital is based on Fedora. Fedora Commons is a support service around it. Keystone -- also by Index Data.
- VUFind. Apache Solr/Lucene.
- eXtensible Catalog (Mellon funded). Not a product now, but will be one day. XC are currently seeking institutional participation. This will "probably become a player" in the coming years.
- Others, such as Fac-Bac-OPAC, Scriblio (formerly WPopac).
Shifting from open source being risky to open source being mainstream. Medium-sized public libraries are going with open source solutions for catalog; it no long requires massive technological effort or as much risk as it did.
In 2002, the open source ILS was a distant possibility -- 3 of 4 tools Marshall reviewed then (Avanti, Pytheas, OpenBook, and Koha) are now defunct. In 2002, open source ILS wasn't a trend.
In 2007, world starting to change. Slowly. A few hundred libraries had purchased an open source ILS; 40,000 had purchased a commercial product. In March 2008 -- early adopters are now catalysts for others. There's a small installed base, which makes others see the possibilities as being real. It seems now that we have a bona fide trend.
The ILS industry is "in turmoil". Companies are merging; libraries are faced with fewer choices from commercial vendors; this gives more credence to ILS arena from standpoint of competition.
Decision to go open source is still primarily a business decision -- as a library, need to demonstrated that the open source ILS best supports the mission of the library.
Koha first open source ILS. Based on Perl, Apache, MySQL, Zebra search engine (from Info Data). Has 300+ libraries using it. Including Santa Cruz Public Library, 10 sites and 2 million volumes. Has relevance-ranked search, book jackets, facets, all that jazz.
Evergreen. Developed by Georgia Public Library consortium. Two year development cycle (6/2004 - 9/2006). A single shared environment shared by all libraries. One library card. Switched from SIRSI Unicorn. Succeeded in part because of standardization of policies across libraries (lending policies, etc.). Used in Georgia, British Columbia, Kent County (Maryland), and under consideration by a group of academic libraries in Canada. So far, only publics have adapted).
OPALS Open Source Automated Library System. Developed by Media Flex. Both installed ($250) and hosted ($170) services. Used by a consortium of K-12 schools in NY.
NextGenLib ILS designed for the developing world. 122 installations (India, Syria, Sudan, Cambodia). Originally closed, converted to open source in early 2008. More information from Library Technology.
Learning Access ILS. Designed for underserved rural public and tribal libraries -- a turnkey solution. But may be defunct, according to Marshall. Built on an early version of Koha, but customized.
Lots of companies offer a business plan to help support ILS software. Index Data, LibLime (Koha), Equinox (Pines), Care Affiliates; MediaFlex.
Duke is working on an open source ILS for higher education (looking for funding from Mellon; Marshall is involved).
Rise in interest led by disillusionment with traditional vendors. But total cost of ownership is probably about the same between open source and traditional tools. Libraries hope that they are less vulnerable to mergers and acquisitions. There's no lump sum payment (though still need hardware, support -- internal or external -- and development costs. Not always clear who is funding the next generation of the current system.
Risk factors: dependency on community organizations and commercial companies. Decisions are often based on philosophical reasons, but they shouldn't be -- you need to consider the merits of the system itself. Make sure features and functionality are what you need.
Open Source vendors/providers need to develop and present their total cost of ownership -- with documentation.
"Urgent need for a new generation of library automation designed for current and future-looking library missions and workflows." That is, systems built for our digital and print collections. Open source tools do OK for systems of yesterday; will they meet the needs of the new library?
Q: How close are we to a system that does not utilize MARC records?
A: Not very. We need systems that do MARC, and Dublin Core, and ONYX, and RDF, etc., etc. The value in existing MARC records is too large to ditch. (Of course, it needs to be MARC XML.)
There was a fair amount of discussion at the recent Computers in Libraries of "next generation discovery tools" -- the technologies that, many of us hope, will supplant the now aging OPAC concept and provide better, more interactive, and more extensive access to our library's holdings.
Marshall Breeding has posted a guide to who is using these new interfaces at http://www.librarytechnology.org/discovery.pl, part of his extensive Library Technology Guides site. (I blogged about Marshall's two presentations at CIL here and here.)
These next-generation tools, whether commercial from the usually suspect ILS vendors or open source from various places, hold great promise for improving our user's ability to browse and find items that we libraries have already acquired.
This page contains a reverse-chronological list of entries in the Library Management Systems category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
RSS4Lib is written by Ken Varnum. Contact Ken.
