Creating local content for web

[bob frasier]

A good point which brings us back to the original inquiry concerning an
inexpensive, easy to use system to manage records in a web environment. If
libraries had the budget/commitment required then perhaps fewer people would be
looking at systems such as Filemaker.

At least in the environments that I'm familiar with, it seems that the
commitment extends as far as purchasing an opac. Since these have evolved into,
or are maketed as,  library management systems, perphaps the view is that these
should satisfy the libraries' information systems needs. It seems that one
measure of the effectiveness of an opac is the number of home grown systems that
have to be grafted onto it in order to satisfy the user needs. (When I arrived
here I discovered that virtually every department has their own home-grown
records keeping mechanism independant of the opac. Some of these consist of
notebooks with 25 years of pieces of paper inserted.)

The end result is that much of what we are doing (or at least I am) is patchwork
- fixing the holes in an opac - rather than the preferred goal of looking at the
libraries needs overall.

Bob Frasier
Western Illinois University





"Richard L. Goerwitz III" wrote:

<snip>

> I think this might move us into some bigger questions re what the
> right overall information architecture might be for deployment of
> web-based services in today's libraries.
>
> Libraries have intense information-systems needs, but often lack
> the kinds of budgets and IT allocations (not to mention institu-
> tional commitment) necessary to fill them.
>
> Are open-source systems the answer?  They don't cost a lot.  But
> often there is more overhead getting them to interoperate.  E.g.,
> you won't have much trouble getting FrontPage and SQL Server to
> work with IIS.  But they'll cost you.  And FrontPage extensions
> have historically be a source of many security problems.  Also,
> you'll have lots of fun trying to get Microsoft software to in-
> teroperate with anything else.  But it'll work.  And with it you
> get the warm feeling of working with an industry behemoth that
> isn't going anywhere any time soon.
>
> Speaking of middle-tier technologies, what of CORBA and DCOM?  Do
> most libraries even have time to stop and think about what a sen-
> sible middle-tier object technology is, still less select and build
> one into their systems.  I don't know how many of the big OPAC vend-
> ors even care about such things.  (I'd actually be interested in
> knowing about people's experiences with the major OPACs in this
> area.  Do they offer, e.g., Java/J2EE integration?)
>
> --
>
> Richard Goerwitz                               richard at Goerwitz.COM
> tel: 401 438 8978