In Practice

Meredith FarkasBy Meredith Farkas
American Libraries Columnist

Distance learning librarian, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont
librarysuccess@gmail.com

August 2008

 

Interesting Times

Anaheim reveals the sunny future of library tech

While talking about the current state of the profession at the Library and Information Technology Association’s Top Technology Trends session at this year’s ALA Annual Conference, OCLC’s Roy Tennant spoke that familiar first line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I tend to agree with that sentiment.

In the midst of an economic downturn, libraries of all kinds are struggling to justify their current level of funding, if not their very existence. We are frequently confronted with stories about libraries that have had to make difficult decisions to provide the same level of service with less money.

At the same time, I feel we’re in an age of great possibility in which libraries have so much more control over their technological destiny. We’ve seen libraries that are dissatisfied with current vendor offerings choosing to build their own subject-guide tools, discovery platforms, and even integrated library systems. Many libraries are capitalizing on the mature free and open source tools already available. So many options exist for libraries of every type and budget.

The tone in the exhibit hall seemed a bit more muted than the jubilant mood last year in Washington, D.C. While there was still a good crowd at the exhibits, the number of conference attendees was also a bit lower than 2007. But on an optimistic note, a number of first-time exhibitors really got my attention, and several smaller vendors generated a lot of buzz. While there’s always plenty of news from the big players in the library technology and content markets, this year it felt like the little guy had a fighting chance to get librarians’ attention in the exhibit hall.

It’s a small(er) world

We’re still seeing a consolidation of major players in certain areas of content and technology. It seems as if hardly a month went by this year that I didn’t see a press release about a major ProQuest acquisition, the most recent being the firm’s purchase of Dialog from Thomson Reuters, expanding its presence in the corporate market (see p. 36). The federated search landscape also changed significantly when ProQuest bought WebFeat, bringing it under the stewardship of its competitor Serials Solutions.

Two popular virtual reference products came together with Altarama’s acquisition of Virtual Reference Librarian plus (VRLplus) from SirsiDynix’s Dokutek division. The popular VRLplus is an excellent complement to Altarama’s RefTracker, a system for managing and tracking virtual reference requests.

One thing that’s gotten bigger at each conference is the number of companies selling maintenance and support of open source software. With the addition of Equinox Software at this year’s event, the open source presence on the show floor was impressive. The recent growth of open source ILS adoption has also been impressive, with dozens of libraries and some high-profile library systems adopting Koha or Evergreen.

Discovery platforms were again big news this year. SirsiDynix joined the growing market with its Enterprise discovery platform, which includes sophisticated searching using fuzzy logic and faceted browsing of results. Unlike many of the other products in this market, Enterprise currently can only be integrated with a SirsiDynix ILS.

Follett has just released its own discovery platform for use with its popular Destiny ILS. Destiny Quest’s interface is perfectly designed for K–12 students with its drag-and-drop interface, visual browsing features, and faceted browsing of search results. Destiny also allows students to rate and review materials in the catalog and capitalizes on the borrowing behavior of patrons to make reading suggestions.

Ex Libris and Innovative Interfaces both recently launched version 2.0 of their discovery platforms, Primo and Encore respectively, with Encore 2.0 offering user tagging and improved facets for browsing. Notable in Primo’s new release is greatly improved search technology, improved scalability, and APIs for 50 services. The two platforms are growing their customer base at a steady pace, with approximately 100 libraries using each.

Many ILS vendors are working to integrate into the catalog social features that allow for a more interactive experience and enable libraries to capitalize on the wisdom of their patrons. Instead of building it themselves, Polaris is integrating social features into its OPAC through a partnership with fellow exhibitor ChiliFresh, which offers a cross-platform review engine that can be integrated into any catalog. Unlike many catalogs where patrons can only see reviews from their own library, reviews are pulled from a database of all ChiliFresh users, although libraries can also choose to only show reviews from their own users.

Another new exhibitor offering many of the Web 2.0 features libraries are looking to integrate into their web presence is Springshare, which offers LibGuides, a platform for creating dynamic subject guides that include social features like tagging, bookmarking, RSS feeds, user ratings, and comments. LibGuides also allows for the creation of widgets so content can be embedded in courseware, Facebook, or any web page.

Long live content

Even with all the focus on platforms, it was obvious in the exhibit hall that content is still king. Much of the big news was in the development of new historical collections. A bigger chunk of the market seems to be engaged in digitizing primary source materials. These collections put materials from far-flung archives at the fingertips of online subscribers, making them a real asset to historical researchers.

EBSCO is throwing its hat into the historical primary source arena with two new major digitization projects. It’s partnered with the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) to digitize the group’s historical periodicals collection from 1693 to 1876. EBSCO will also digitize the historical monographs and serials of the American Theological Library Association. These two projects reflect a change in strategy for the company, which has been primarily focused on the academic journal market. ProQuest has also signed a deal with AAS, in this case to digitize and bring 7,000 family history books from the society to HeritageQuest.

If you haven’t heard of Footnote.com, chances are good that many of your patrons have. Footnote.com provides an impressive collection of documents, digitized primarily from the National Archives, that would be of use to any American history buff or student. Some are freely available online, while others are only available to members. Documents can be annotated, commented on, and organized into custom collections. Footnote.com offers memberships to individuals as well as public and academic libraries. Members can also upload documents and write about their own family or community history on the site.

The battle to be the leading provider of historical newspaper content has heated up with Readex’s announcement of its partnership with the Center for Research Libraries to create the world’s largest digital archive of international newspapers. ProQuest is also adding major U.S. and European newspapers, as well as black newspapers, to its Historical Newspapers product.

This conference also saw growth in the market for tools to manage locally digitized collections. Polaris released Fusion, which manages digital content and integrates it into the Polaris PowerPAC so patrons can search all of a library’s collections from one interface. Innovative’s Content Pro focuses on ease of use for staff in adding content and metadata. Content Pro metadata is OAI-PMH–compliant, allowing it to be harvested by aggregators as well as by Innovative’s own federated search and discovery platforms.

A number of companies have modified and repackaged their existing products for new markets. LexisNexis has made its first foray into the public library market with LexisNexis Library Express. The product offers news, business, and legal publications chosen specifically with the needs of public library patrons in mind.

With Safari Select for Public Libraries, ProQuest has also brought its popular Safari Books Online into the public library market, offering 400 e-books on popular computing and electronics designed for a consumer market.

World Book has developed an online version of its encyclopedia for a new group of K–12 students. World Book Discover is designed for students who read below their grade level, offering easy-to-read articles on topics that interest older students, along with a text-to-speech feature.

OverDrive made big news earlier this year when it announced expanded offerings that include MP3 audiobooks. At Annual Conference, the firm said the District of Columbia Public Library is the first to offer these DRM-free audiobooks, meaning patrons will be able to download the audiobooks to any device capable of playing MP3s, such as iPod, Zune, and Sansa.

Goodbye Google . . .

There was a lot of talk about the absence of Google from the exhibit hall, considering the way the company has courted librarians in recent years and the short distance from Mountain View to Anaheim. While Google may not have been there, a number of vendors had Google-related announcements.

As soon as Google announced an API allowing developers to dynamically link to individual items in the Google Book project, Ex Libris announced integration of Google Books’ About this Book pages into its products. OCLC and Google recently signed an agreement to better share data across Google Books and WorldCat, making both better able to link to the holdings of the other. As part of a push to integrate e-books into 360 Link, Serials Solutions announced at Annual Conference that it had integrated Google Books into the link-resolver service.

…Hello Nintendo

The big company getting a lot of buzz in place of Google was first-time exhibitor Nintendo. Gaming has become much more prevalent in libraries over the past few years and is increasingly recognized as an educational tool, so it only seemed natural that there be a gaming pavilion in the exhibit hall.

The pavilion included makers of board games, card games, and accessories as well as electronic games, but Nintendo was certainly the biggest draw. Nintendo systems were set up to demonstrate how libraries could configure their systems for patron use, and librarians eagerly queued up to try them out.

Undoubtedly, these are difficult times for so many libraries, but when I think about the technological options available to us now versus just a few years ago, I feel optimistic about the future. We should continue to see growth in open source technologies for libraries as well as increased support for openness from all vendors. With so many small new vendors in the library market as well as product diversification from the old guard, the result should be more choice for libraries.

We’re also coming into an age of experimentation where many librarians are taking over the reigns of technological innovation. As Tennant himself quipped during the Top Technology Trends, “Clearly these are interesting times.”