Een nieuwe generatie catalogi…

Eric Schnell verwijst op zijn weblog naar een interessant rapport ‘The next generation catalog‘ (PDF).

Schnell zegt hierover:

However, what I am really excited to read is the desire on the part of the Alliance to break library culture and control over bibliographic information and to let the customers play with it.

[…]

The challenge is that libraries do build systems and services with our (librarian) needs in mind. Our need for control. Our need for perfection. Our need for process. A library information system (or service) that uses a development process that does not meet our internal cultural needs is almost immediately classified as being a failure. We then focus way too much energy doing a post mortem on what went wrong in the development process in an effort to “do it right the next time.”

It’s no wonder that library systems of tomorrow are really just library systems of yesterday.

It seems to me that as a profession we are stuck in a bad relationship with our systems and vendors. We just can’t figure out a way to get out of it. Are we happy that III will not give us APIs? Are we so insecure with our relationship with them that we are content to take what they give us? Do we feel we are that powerless?

The approach that the Alliance has outlined in their report is a extremely positive sign that some finally have had enough and are willing to make the hard decisions required for information system independence.

Informatiesysteemonafhankelijkheid.

Een mooi woord voor Scrabble.

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