[Web4lib] RE: vendors and usability

[Bridge, Frank]

Hello Everyone--

I believe that Karen Coyle is closer to the reality of the situation.
The library automation marketplace is a limited universe and the number
of vendors is declining.  The marketplace is not a wealthy one and its
users are demanding, not only in system functionality but also in system
reliability.  Libraries often establish strong contractual performance
guarantees to assure that system functionality and reliability are
preserved.  

In the middle of this business environment it is difficult to expect its
vendors to re-design their systems from the bottom up so that a library
can then affix its own locally-built user interface or someone else's.
It takes millions of dollars for a vendor to re-engineer a system.  The
marketplace is littered with the carcasses of vendors who have failed to
transition between system architectures.  A major intent of such a
change was to deliver a new look and feel--this is a major system
selling point, but also intended to fall within the bounds of the secure
functionality and reliability mentioned above.  

The newly-suggested model--having a library automation vendor design an
open-ended system so that the local library can then overlay its own
interface--introduces variables that a library automation vendor could
not control and whose look and feel could be seriously compromised.
There are a number of libraries who have the local expertise to
accomplish this successfully, or to administer a third party vendor to
do so.  But is there a sufficiently large universe of libraries to
sustain a market for the vendor investment to develop such a system?  

It is that business opportunity that creates the pressure to design such
a system, not just our demands for it.

 

Now, if vendors were to come up with interfaces as a separate swapable 
module, so that a good interface could be built locally or by another 
company and fixed onto the systems back-end, that would be a way to go. 
Z39.50 etc. interfaces to our existing catalog databases don't seem to 
be very flexible because of the limitations of backend diversity and old

code in the backend systems.

It seems that the need is to  pressure vendors to work on the 
customizeability of their web interfaces, and to put effort into 
modernizing their back-end systems.

---
Frank R. Bridge
Technology Management Administrator
Chesterfield County Public Library
PO Box 297
9501 Lori Rd.
Chesterfield, VA  23832-0297
Voice:   804-748-1980
Fax:      804-751-4679