I've never really grasped the whole "meme" thing that seems to be so popular in library blogs. When I see a new meme emerge, I feel as though I've already missed the boat—like the cliche of reading about trends in Time, by then it it too late.

As a lover of words and phrases, though, I am intrigued by what I would call lots of pre-meme activity—the use (and often over- and mis-use) of words that become part of the growing library lexicon. Recent examples include: seamless, disintermediation, open, and the like.

Borrowing liberally from Entertainment Weekly's "What's hot":

Currently, there are three words that strike my fancy—workflow, life cycle, and governance. Mostly, I've been thinking about governance. The not-very-well-thought-out musings (what else is blogging good for?) were spawned by two seemingly unrelated things. The first was a conversation with Roy Tennant about his recent move to OCLC; the second was this well-written post by Care Affiliate's Carl Grant.

Carl's post reminded me that the open source crowd often talks about "ownership" in sometimes dangerously loose terms—mainly vendor vs. free software provider. I think that the pejorative nature of the discussion plus the mis-alignment of "vendor" with "proprietary software" confuses the notion of software governance. What are Equinox, LibLime, and Index Data if not vendors? They cannot by the very nature of their wares "own" the software that they service. They can (and do, for the most part) govern the software that they support.

I've said many times that who owns a company is an important factor to consider when choosing software. I think that what I always really meant was that who governs the company is what matters. I have said this other ways—"not all equity companies are the same"—and danced around the touchy subject of ownership. But regardless of who owns the companies or owns the software, what we really want to know is who runs them.

The other angle on this has me thinking about member-governed organizations—ALA, LITA, DLF, NISO, and yes, even OCLC. Because I have had some level of involvement with all of the above, I've been giving lots of thought lately to the areas of "overlap," which is a nice humanistic euphemism for "competition." It occurs to me that the overlapping problems of these organizations are also solved by the thing they have in common—governance.

Why is it that membership in a group grants unfettered license to complain about the organization but creates no clear responsibility for fixing its perceived problems? Seems all too convenient.

Granted that scale, scope, reach, and even bank-account size of those listed above are all different. Nevertheless, whether proprietary or open, member-driven, board-directed, publicly or privately owned, the nimble, innovative, and well-governed will win the day.

I'm in Denver for the the cleverly named 2007 LITA Forum. This is the first in a while that I have not been giving a talk at, which is nice. I can enjoy Denver, enjoy my colleagues, and begin my new role as "committee recruiter"...one of the first duties that comes along with being Vice President of the division.

So, yes, I am taking time out to talk up LITA a bit. It is one of the best conferences for IT networking that I know of (that's small 'n', lest you think I refer to the days of LAN and WAN administration and actually meeting to talk about it). Long breaks and a diverse crowd of administrators, managers, techies, and newbies make it a great setting. And for those who can't be there, almost every session is covered by an army of volunteer bloggers at the LITA blog.

My favorite session yesterday was from Gregg Silvis from Delaware, who opened the floor with "Library 2023: A Provoked Discussion on the Future of Libraries." Basically, he lit the fuse and got away to watch the fireworks, while ably guiding the discussion and keeping it civil. It was a frank discussion punctuated with just the right amount of contrariness.

Silvis posited that in 2023 there are 100,000,000 freely available texts; what does this mean for librarians, scholars, copyright, and even Kinkos? There was a lot of discussion about the library as a place for study (a third place) versus the warehouse of books. And way too much discussion—including by your's truly—about the value of metadata. It got me thinking about the library as place. Short of there being barista and XBox training in library school, I am struggling with the librarian's role in this 2023 library.

Quote of the day from UIUC's Michael Twidale:
"Public libraries are the gateway drug [to freely available content]."

Ron Gardner, Contentdm specialist for OCLC, made the point that libraries are getting a lot more involved in the creation that goes on in libraries. It got me thinking that we are still a little fixated on what comes into the library (metadata creation, organization, even the library website) rather than caring as much as we should about what goes out.

In a profession full of humanists and expert researchers, is it time for us to be thinking even more about what people produce in libraries, rather than simply finding them the right resources and leaving them to their best devices? Could the library profession be a key player in the quality of information that with or without our help is going to wind up available to millions through search and discovery mechanisms that are not of our own flawless (ahem) design? We're already playing a role in the production of mass digitization of our existing resources and the creation of digital portals for our unique resources. Isn't the next logical step to be the stewards of the things that are created from access to those things?

Maybe I'm just high....altitudinally speaking, that is.

The names are changin', deals are a-happenin', and the grant money is flowing.

More Names
I sometimes wonder if there is still a niche market left in the library automation industry. If I had been smart, I would have started selling business cards. From an environmental angle, I wonder how many landfills we are filling up with all the old ones. Get ready to start seeing some new cards soon.

Some name changes make sense. Others, I am never so sure about. Here are the bigs ones this season.

ProQuest has a new name. It's ProQuest. Nope, you read that right. Took me a second, too, but as you will recall, Cambridge Information Group bought ProQuest a little while back. ProQuest has more recognition and rolls off the tongue a little easier, I guess. That's quite a suite of products that company controls now, so I think we can expect some interesting changes in the future.

In case you did not realize it, SirsiDynix's announcement about "Rome," preceded the selection of an actual name for the product. SirsiDynix Symphony is "the company’s new integrated library system that blends the best features of SirsiDynix Unicorn and SirsiDynix Horizon 8.0/Corinthian to offer the most impressive array of library and consortium management solutions available to the library community." I don't think the new name clears up any of the market confusion, so I will try to do that here. The name is new, but until I see something technically new, it's still an upgrade for the Unicorn ILS. The company should start having some fun with naming new releases, though. Is this SD's first symphony? Imagine an entire release dedicated to music uniform titles.

Here's one I like. Xrefer has changed its name to Credo Reference. I always thought Xrefer sounded too much like "cross reference"...apropos for a reference resource, but not descriptive of the company. Credo now offers 273 reference titles from nearly 60 publishers.

Granted...
You may have heard that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given another $12.6M to WebJunction. The money will "allow OCLC to replace and add software—including a new learning management system, content management system and portal software—that will provide added functionality and flexibility for WebJunction members and community partners." I might not have described OCLC as hurting for money, exactly, but you have to give props to the folks at WebJunction. They have created community and resource sharing tools for libraries that rival (quite well) those that have come before them. They also have a pretty nice website.

Deals with wheels
LibLime has announce a distribution deal with PALINET. The open source library system Koha will be available to PALINET members at a discounted price. The software has been around long enough now to be available as both Koha Classic and Koha Zoom. Crawford County Federated Library System (CCFLS) in Pennsylvania chose LibLime to support their new Koha ZOOM system in 2006. The open source ILS wave is swelling.

Well, back to the exhibit hall....

My first day in Washington for the ALA Annual Conference. I was born in this city and have so far not been reminded why I wanted so badly to leave. It's nice when the nostalgia lingers. D.C. is a great city, but it can also be hard to live in a place where the barometer changes substantially every 4–8 years. I grew up in the burbs, but I still miss things about this place—the culture, serious politics, and some of the people. I miss the Washington Post.

As I write this, I am actually squatting on the exhibit hall floor—it's amazing what a smile and a press pass will get you into. Of course, the exhibits don't open until Saturday, so I am just enjoying watching things get set up. It's all carpets, electrical power, and trash cans at this point. No candy, contests, and freebies. No business cards, smiles, and awkward eye-shifting to badges as names and place of origin are trying to be recalled or discovered.

I'm going to have a busy conference, so I'm not sure how much time I will have to blog. If there's any big news, I'll try to get it up here as soon as I can. I've already heard a rumor or two, but I will try to be more journalist than blogger, and wait for the official press releases.

Big thumbs up on the wireless at the conference. Happy 100th birthday, American Libraries, and cool T-shirt.