It’s easy to become enamored of social networking sites and Web 2.0 toys to the point where they seem like a panacea for everything that’s wrong with your library or your job. Slap a wiki on it and call me in the morning. The most successful uses of the newest tech tools have recognized that they’re just that: tools.

I’ve been feeling, for awhile now, that the term Library 2.0 has been co-opted by a growing group of libraries, librarians, and particularly vendors to push an agenda of “change” that deflects attention from some very real issues and concerns without really changing anything. It’s very evident in the profusity of L2-centric workshops and conferences that there is a significant snake-oil market in the bibliosphere. We’re blindly casting about for a panacea and it’s making us look like fools.

Ignoring the information ecology

Perhaps the most significant area of neglect is our failure to recognize that Library 2.0 is a delicate ecology. Like Web 2.0, it represents technology that is inherently disruptive on many levels. Not only does Web 2.0 undermine notions of authority and control, but its economic and human costs are very real. There is, indeed, something very exciting about the fact that Google bought YouTube for $1.65 Billion–especially since it was only a company of sixty-odd employees. But at the same time, I’m a little alarmed that sixty-odd people could dominate such a large piece of that market-share. Not for the same reason that we have (soon to have had) the FCC’s media ownership rule, but because the force of that type of change has to be felt somewhere. Think of it in terms of a bag of nitrate dumped in a stream–the algae does really well, but the fish suffocate.

Luckily, Web 2.0 as a whole exists in a large, rather well-insulated economy that will adjust over time. Libraries, on the other hand, are significantly more delicate ecosystems that require more care and discretion. Specifically, we need to understand how our internal information ecology works and how to tend to it. How and where we interface with our users is where the rubber meets the road and should merit a little more thought then simply thrusting a MySpace page in their face or building a new library in Second Life–a service our users overwhelmingly do not use and, which seems to me, like a creepy post-apocalyptic wasteland. I’ll even turn the tables on myself and admit that I was wrong about local tagging in the OPAC. SOPAC was by-and-large a success, but its use of user-contributed tags is a failure. For the past nine months, the top ten tags have included “fantasy”, “manga”, “anime”, “time travel”, “shonen”, “shonen jump”, and “shape-changing”. As a one-time resident of Ann Arbor, I can assure you that these are not topics that dominated the collective hive mind. Well, maybe time travel, if hash-bash was going on.

So we need to understand that, while it’s alright to tip the balance and fail occasionally, we’re more likely to do so if we’re arbitrarily introducing technology that isn’t properly integrated into our overarching information framework. Of course, that means we have to have a working framework to begin with that compliments and adheres to our tradition of solid, proven librarianship. In other words, when we use technology, it should be transparent, intuitive, and a natural extension of the patron experience. If it can’t be transparent, then it should be so overwhelmingly beneficial to the user that it is canonized not by the techies, but the users themselves.

You can’t buy Library 2.0

…And vendors, you can’t sell it. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be attempted. I think perhaps there is an expectation that real-life should somehow mimic the success of the software plug-in model. There may be something to be said for the “object-oriented” library, but that is a far cry from stuffing a new product into an already-awkward, malformed, and ill-suited portfolio. For example, third-party OPACs, as they are currently being sold to us, are likely to fail. Not because they are inherently bad products–some are, some aren’t, but because the companies producing them are only mimicking the Web 2.0 widget–the deliverable. What they are not doing is reevaluating their business and development processes with the goal of realigning them with the interests of libraries. I discussed the pressing need for significant development partnerships back in the July 2007 issue of LJ’s NetConnect and I still believe that that particular model for collaboration is the only way to significantly improve our ability to embed technology in the library. It’s not a long-term viable solution to sell the concept of development partnership when all it really is is just the opportunity to report bugs on software that is not quite ready for prime time.

As libraries, we need to realize that the answers to our larger questions cannot be found out on the exhibitor’s floor. That’s where we find solutions to specific needs that have been identified by a thorough self-examination.

Meeting technology half-way

Don’t hold your breath waiting for technology to adapt to the library environment. Web 2.0 did not evolve with libraries in mind, and there’s no reason to think that it ever will. I realize that, at first glance, that statement seems to run counter to what I’ve been saying with regards to not forcing a square peg into a round hole. What I mean is that we cannot expect to retrofit our libraries with tomorrow’s technology. The true pursuit of Library 2.0 involves a thorough recalibration of process, policy, physical spaces, staffing, and technology so that any hand-offs in the patron’s library experience are truly seamless. We can learn a lot about collaboration and individual empowerment from Web 2.0, but we cannot be subsumed by it because we have a mission that eclipses “don’t be evil” which is the closest thing to a conscience the Web will ever have.

Overall, my stay was fantastic. It was close to the conference (couldn’t really be much closer), I was upgraded to an executive suite, had a great view, and felt that my needs, as modest as they are, were well taken care of. With the exception of the sausages. The sausages they brought to my room for breakfast were in rough shape. I can easily overlook that, however, and I did. Except that I marked down the food in the survey.

And I would have completely forgotten about those bad bangers, if it were not for an email I received last week:

After taking the time to review your response, I was concerned by the rating which you gave to breakfast overall that you had at Three Flags Cafe. Please accept my sincere apology for our failure to provide you with the overall quality to which you were expecting while dining with us.

I would certainly appreciate hearing from you personally, Mr. Blyberg, so that we can gain more insight into your dissatisfaction with the overall quality of service that you received. We had always taken great pride in providing the highest quality of service to our guests and we regret this was not your experience.

We value your feedback and appreciate your loyalty and I certainly hope that I will have the opportunity to speak with you soon. You may contact me personally at [snip] or by e-mail at [snip]. It is our pleasure to serve you and the next time you visit in Monterey please feel free to contact me prior to your visit as we want your next visit to be a 10!

Not bad. They turned something that was really not a big deal into an opportunity to show they care about me as their guest. Granted, I’ll just skip the room service in the future and head across the street to Pinos, but of course I’ll continue to stay there.

This underscored, for me, the fact that our ILS, in addition to everything else it does, needs to function as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.  This anecdote is exactly the type of story I’d want told about MPOW.  Where are the most complaints lodged?  At the circulation and reference desks, of course.  And what tools, other than social grace and Job’s patience, do librarians have when taking them?  Email?  email who, what, and why?  Or better yet, the old, “let me write your name down on this piece of reference scrap and never get back to you” trick?

No, we need practical ways of tracking complains–who is making them, what they’re complaining about, how often, time of day, and so on.  Then, most importantly, we need to follow-up with the patron and let them know that we still love them.

I’ll tell you, I sure as heck wouldn’t want to be a vendor right now.

But then again, what if libraries received an open letter warning against the same complacency that plagues our ILS vendors? Remember this open letter in the Lawrence Journal World?

What if our users decided that the $80-$100 allocated to the library from their property taxes would personally serve them better if it were spent on a Netflix subscription? After all, DVDs constitute the largest percentage of circulated items at our library. Yet, compared to Netflix, our selection is lousy, availability is a joke, and distribution methods? Ha. That’s just one example of many instances where our users are not getting the ROI they may be looking for.

The reality is that public libraries are not in a position to compete with power houses like Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes. We’re even getting our hat handed to us by the pirate movie and MP3 scene. So when I read Roy’s letter, I thought, yes he’s dead-on, but that pendulum swings right back at us. Roy sums up some of the advice given by a Business Week article about the Eastman Kodak company:

• Watch for treacherous shifts
• Get your best people behind the program
• Give your new initiatives room to breathe
• Make painful breaks with the past
• Don’t confuse what your company does with how it does it

Sage advice. We ought to take it. I’m personally much less concerned about the fate of our vendors. They’ve made their bed, and we no longer have to sleep in it with them.

This latest maneuver against our vendors’ flanks consists of several posts in addition to Sarah’s. She links to a post from Steve Oberg who, in turn, links to a very interesting post at It’s all good.

Sarah has every right to express the frustration she does with vendors. They are still, in many ways, serving to stifle some great innovation at a time when innovation is both vital and time-sensitive. I think that’s the impetus for this frustration, now. Working with existing systems is outright infuriating and the promises we get from our vendors are like those you might get from an addict who owes you money: “I’ll have it for you next week, I promise!”

I found Steve Oberg’s observations to be particularly keen, though I do take issue with one point: “By and large, lack of deep pockets and resources to research and quickly implement new products or features”. I believe the problem is not money even though vendors may see it that way–they are looking at the marketplace which is generating a perpetual demand for widget X, Y, and Z. Ultimately, I see this as a problem that is internal to our libraries and not with our vendors. Oberg almost touches on this with another point, “More attention [is] given to librarians’ needs than library users’ needs”. Except, I would phrase it, “More attention is given to librarians’ needs than the needs of those who work intensively with the ILS.” In other words, the tech staff. Libraries have been incredibly reticent when it comes to letting technical people make the technical decisions. The result? Vendors who are given laundry lists of nonsense by folks who really don’t know what they’re asking for.

Alane at It’s all good has a marvelous paraphrase of Pat Sommers, CEO of SirsiDynix:

Pat was responding, if I recall correctly, to a question from the floor about why ILS vendors don’t innovate more quickly. Pat remarked that his company spends $10 million a year tweaking their systems to respond to requests from customers, and that left scant time and resources to make big changes. Robin rephrased this to describe all that activity as “building twiddly bits.”

I’m glad Pat Sommers called us out on this. We are ultimately responsible for giving flight to an albatross that draws both vendors and libraries away from the marriage between our vision of tomorrow’s library and 21st century technology. In reality, all we really need is the simplest of solutions: the ability to innovate on our own. But what will that take?

First, librarians need to stop asking for silly little twiddly bits. Libraries should be listening to their IT departments and vetting requests through them. If you don’t have an IT staff, then a part of the solution is reevaluating your staffing needs so that you have some technical people on-board–this can be as simple as canvasing your existing staff, looking for someone who wants to make the move into geekdom. I believe that a coder-on-board sign is simply a characteristic of most 21st century libraries–it’s not enough to employ the best librarians you can find, you need to get passionate, interested techies as well. Ideally, library schools ought to be considering the merits of a CS track. Courses need to be developed that synthesize coding skills with library science. The more technical know-how that is mixed in to their customer-base, the better chance vendors have at getting sensible feature-requests.

But it’s not just us. ILS vendors need to wake up! An entire new business strategy needs to be extolled. What should that strategy look like? Vendors need to enable library staff with tool-sets in the form of standards and APIs. Of course I’ve been over this time and time again, but the fact is, most vendors are not hearing this. Maybe I’m feeling the fatigue that sets in after months of subverting the intended use of our system, but quite frankly, I hold little hope that our vendor will decide to pursue a strategy that champions community dev. In fact, during a recent visit to AADL, we were told by a top III executive that we have all the APIs we need. Apparently, he seemed unfamiliar with the entire notion. What we’ve accomplished is in spite of our ILS, not because of it. He was visiting under the pretense that they were very impressed with what we’d done with their system–I thought, “great, this is encouraging–a chance to open a dialogue”. As it turned out, he was just using AADL as a sales venue for another customer. The irony makes me grit my teeth. It’s a good thing I was on vacation that week–I might have told him that we’ve done things to their system that would make Paris Hilton blush. (I would have thought it, at least.)

There is real frustration among the people who are working with these systems, but it should also be said that some vendors are making an effort and seem to be truly “getting it”–or at least trying to get it. It’s not entirely fair to castigate them all. They are not just some dark uber-force, brooding “out there” among the turbines of a ravenous capital market. It’s important to take a good look at your own ILS and vendor to determine whether they really have your best interests in mind. You may just find that they do. If that’s the case, use every ounce of that good fortune to your advantage because many of us are not so lucky.

One of 2006's watershed moments has already happened in the unveiling of NCSU's new online catalog. I'm going to forgo description of it since that's already been done--I'll just say that it's too sexy by far.

Another great January moment was seeing Casey Bisson's WordPress OPAC project which poses some intrinsic questions about the nature of our relationship to the ILS and OPAC as well as with our vendors.

A little closer to home, Ed Vielmetti launched a new blog, Superpatron, and began developing a veritable suite of third-party library applications using the RSS feeds from AADL's catalog. I've wanted to begin a patron development initiative for over a year now and his work has given me a kick in the pants to make that happen.

Toward the end of January, University of Huddersfield's Dave Pattern joined me in an effort to create a patron-oriented REST presentation layer to the OPAC. Dave has invited me to work with him on search suggestions. He's already done some great work on it and when I get caught up, I plan to dive in.

While tinkering with PHP's GD tools, I threw together a social card catalog feature on our OPAC which has been much more popular than I would have thought for a simple proof-of-concept, leading me to believe that the public is hungry for a social element to the online library catalog. (In just over two weeks, almost 600 comments have been added to the card system and over 50 unique users have begun building personal card catalogs with their library account--but more on that in another post).

What does this all mean? More specifically, what does this all mean for the OPAC? The OPAC hasn't enjoyed this much attention since it's inception--something is going on. The traditional model of a sterile, uninviting web catalog is dying quickly amidst a growing din of disdain and lust for something better, different. Yet, the darling in all this is the data that lurks behind these poorly designed, hastily conceived interfaces. We still love the data--our data--our public's data. So there is a place for the OPAC, but the question is, what will rise from the ashes of these tired old catalogs as they are consumed by an iconoclastic fervor that sweeps in like a cyclone out of tornado alley?

Actually, that's only one of several important questions to ponder.

What will the new OPAC look like? Well, we're not quite sure yet, but it's clear that forces like Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 are driving the design process. As you peel back the layers of motivation, you uncover a goldmine of ideas and charges for our next-gen systems. There is no template, there is no hallowed road to success this year. There is, however, miles and miles of uncharted territory and a wellspring of new tools to pluck from. That is why the OPAC is not being enhanced, it's being reborn.

Where are the vendors in all this? Some vendors like SirsiDynix and Talis are giving a nod to these changes, but others like III (AADL's vendor) are conspicuously silent and, in some cases, almost resistant to this movement. If you are a smaller library or a library who doesn't have the technical expertise some others are lucky enough to have, your vendor is the only resource you can turn to for answers. You stand a good chance of not getting any from them. Ultimately, if you want to be an early adopter and innovator, you need to turn to the library community itself for support, which leads me to my next question.

Who is doing all this? I've mentioned some folks earlier in this article, but they are not the only group working to recreate the OPAC. A lot of great folks at code4lib are working hard to bring new services and features to bear--much of their work is aimed at expanding data availability. The blogosphere is teeming with great ideas and people willing to lend a hand. The problem is that in order to launch an initiative aimed at recreating your own OPAC, you need the expertise in-house--no matter how generous the community-at-large is. If you don't have it, and are unable/unwilling to commit technical people to the task, you're hand is forced to wait for your vendor to prefabricate a solution.

But isn't the prefabricated OPAC exactly what we are dispensing with now? In many ways, yes. I think an important ingredient of this primordial mix is that the new OPACs we're seeing distinguish themselves with their own 'personality'. That is, there is something about them that is uniquely personal and characteristic of the institutions they represent. Public library websites are specially poised to provide a community portal. What other municipal service will create an online community where social data is aggregated at such a local scale? At the heart of those websites is the OPAC--it's the nexus between the work we do and the outside world. It many cases, its the only way our mission touches those outside the physical boundaries of the library itself. Shouldn't it be as unique as the people who work inside those buildings? Shouldn't it be as unique as the community itself?

Well, then, how is it done? That's the big question, isn't it? Like I said, there is no easy road to the finish line. The key to success is having a vision and putting the right people in the right place to get the job done. A combination of talent, creativity, passion, and determination will get you most of the way. The folks at NCSU have shown that its possible to slam dunk these projects and I have a feeling we'll see more innovation this year. The best tool we have at our disposal now are the social networks within the larger library community. It's important that we work together and help each other out. Now is the time for collaboration. We also need our vendors to get on-board.

Start putting pressure on your vendors, even if you have no current plans to revamp your OPAC. It's unfortunate that many vendors are refusing to even consider radical change. Ours certainly will not. Watch out for vendors who repackage existing features with new web/library 2.0 jargon. We were recently told that our ILS already has a sufficient API. We can still recognize the pig behind the lipstick. Ultimately, all we need are 4 simple requests honored. The more they hear it, the more likely they will eventually listen. In the meantime, get to know your ILS inside and out so when the time comes you'll be able to hit the ground running.

2006 will not be the year we all adopt new OPAC features, but I think it's shaping up to be the year a new OPAC vision is created. We will certainly see a lot of prototypes, I think. Say what you will about web 2.0 or library 2.0, but the discussions they've convoked are helping to initiate and compile some very significant work. We ought to be taking notice as the new public face of our industry begins to shine.

[tags]OPAC, Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Libraries, ILS[/tags]