A bunch of my colleagues are dressed up today. I considered donning my khaki-colored dockers, denim shirt, and brown loafers, but was afraid that no one would recognize me as being a vendor. I needed too many props to pull off the costume, like some PowerPoint slides that look like a real website. I have mastered the ability to smile, rock back and forth on my feet while swinging my arms, and exuding that look of "Boy, do I have a solution for you!"

It's getting harder these days to determine whether what libraries are getting is a trick or a treat. We tend not to take "trick or treat" too seriously . . . as in give me a treat or I will play a trick.

Sometimes the trick is figuring out just what the heck is going on, like when two competing vendors join forces to offer products and services. We've seen this ad nauseam in the ILS vendor world in the last couple of years. It's even present in the open source community where openness is the shared structure despite the fact that the products themselves compete. This week, we see it in the self-check and security arena.

3M and Checkpoint have apparently joined forces. It's not quite a merger and I am still trying to figure out the techno-political ramifications of the partnership: 3M will be an exclusive reseller of Checkpoint technology, and Checkpoint will continue to sell directly to libraries. The partnership is described in this press release (pdf).

Reading between the lines a little, it seems like 3M is enamored of Checkpoint's technology, and Checkpoint likes 3M's support and customer service infrastructure. How they will reconcile their products might be akin to how the entire self-check and security market reconciles its standards, something that has been contentious for the last few years. 3M and Checkpoint are both on the NISO RFID for Library Applications Working Group, chaired by VTLS's Vinod Chachra. TAGSYS, an RFID maker, is also on the group. The extent to which competing vendors have input into the standard is unclear.

In my opinion, the discussion around RFID has been too philosophical (privacy, data leaks, etc.) and not technical enough (interoperability, technological lifespan, etc.). Establishing a relationship with a self-check and security vendor has too often been a life-long relationship for technological reasons. Interoperability is the only hope in being able to choose the right vendor with whom to establish a relationship.

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 just got back from Nashville and the 9th annual LITA Forum--the second of four trips in just under 3 weeks. Next I'm off to NISO's Discovery to Delivery, and then I wind up my fall travel in Charleston. You're probably wondering how I get any work done...the secret is I don't.

Anyway, the LITA Forum is always a great chance to catch up with colleagues, see some good presentations and thoughtful keynotes, and just hang out. I was pleased to see more public librarians in attendance this year. There were just shy of 400 in in Nashville. For some very good coverage of the sessions, check out the LITA Blog site.

I could go on and on about several of the presentations, but one I wanted to mention in particular was given by Adam Chandler and David Ruddy (Cornell University) and Ted Koppell (Ex Libris) on the SUSHI protocol. SUSHI is an automated way to transfer COUNTER compliant electronic resource usage statistics. Links to the respective sites provide more details.

The idea makes a lot of sense, and keeps libraries and middleware ERM providers from having to devise ways to collect, collate, and munge piles of spreadsheets into something useful. The problem, of course, is traction--convincing content providers to adopt the standard. I was immediately reminded of all the efforts that went into the NISO Metasearch Initiative. Like NISO-MI, SUSHI adoption and COUNTER compliance are standards and protocols that librarians and vendors together should pressure publishers to adopt. If libraries did not have to expend so much effort to collect statistics, they might actually have some time to discern what they mean.

When it comes to metasearch, I am continually frustrated to see publisher after publisher do more and more to their portals, as if every scholar and library in the world came through their door to be wowed by the latest search feature. It's hard enough to get patrons to start with the library home page, and many libraries are trying to develop services and technologies that put out the virtual- library welcome mat in other places. It's all well and good to make publisher websites nicer landing places, but such effort without a means to push content out to users or to make the content available for federated search are futile (some are indeed doing both, and that is fine with me). Libraries should be leading the effort to break down the arrogant barriers between their patrons and the content they seek.

I realize I am getting a little outside my area of expertise, but it's frustrating when publishers already have us over a barrel for the content they provide--it's even more annoying to see wasted efforts at technical developments that don't necessarily help users.

Whether it's metasearch or developing standards like COUNTER and SUSHI, I applaud the publishers who give these efforts traction by trying them out; I encourage the rest to take a leap of faith, or their customers (libraries) to push harder.

A friend recently told me that standards are a lot like toothbrushes--everyone agrees that they're a good thing, but no one wants to use someone else's. But whether yours or someone else's, your breath will stink and your teeth will still rot if you don't use one.

So look for a fresh brush, because NISO (the National Information Standards Organization) has some new leadership. Todd Carpenter takes over as managing director on September 1. Carpenter was most recently director of business development with BioOne, and has spent several years in the scholarly publishing field with Johns Hopkins University and Haworth presses.

"NISO's new strategic plan calls for a new leader with a deep understanding of our members' needs as well as their existing practices and priorities."
--Carl Grant, President and COO of VTLS and NISO Board Chair

"Standards development is the single best example of where cooperation serves the interests of the library, publishers, and technical-provider communities. I am excited about implementing NISO's strategic plan, which is focused on improving the efficiency of information standards development, expanding the scope of NISO's services, and enhancing involvement of each of NISO's key constituencies."
--Todd Carpenter

Carpenter’s appointment comes at a critical time for the standards body, after a Blue Ribbon panel addressed its future, a new strategic plan was announced, and 20-year standards veteran and executive director Pat Harris departed last November. All the strategic planning documents are worth a good look.

Put simply, the ‘N’ in NISO must stand for nimble. In an age of web mashups, rapid prototype deployment, and an information clientele with higher and higher expectations, this membership and volunteer organization has many challenges in front of it, but many opportunities as well. I know I am not alone in wishing Mr. Carpenter the best of luck as NISO moves forward.