Is change really good? This is one of those phrases that is spoken like a truism. I wish it was one of those phrases that had been bastardized, like "money is the root of all evil." Actually, "the love of money is the root of all evil" is more correct. Let me try this: "The love of change is the root of all disorder."

Of course, I say this with a love of disorder. I believe that some of us are drawn to librarianship not out of a penchant for organizing things or out of some deep-seated anal- retentiveness (though I sorta have those, too). What we actually embrace is disorder and chaos. We are not nearly as organized as we like to think we are.

And boy are things chaotic now. I wanted to write about change today, because I still think change is good. I was surprised to see my colleague Roy Tennant caution against change recently: "I wouldn't want to change vendors now for the world. For those of you who can wait for a bit, I think now is a great time to do exactly that." His points about upheaval and the tenuous state of some of the vendors are spot on, but as a prognosticator in this market, I'm not sure I see things calming down anytime soon.

1. Waiting to choose the "right system" is like waiting for the right time to get married, have a baby, buy a house, change jobs...are you prepared to wait forever?


2. I've tried to put my money where my mouth is before. If one believes that the ILS is a commodity, what is the harm in choosing one over the other? If an end-of-life was declared for yours tomorrow, what would you do? I see lots of libraries out there that might as well have an end-of-life system based on what they are doing with it. (This is not meant to be a completely negative statement. Lots of us have better things to do than muck with a system that isn't completely broken.) The system you have might not have a future, but if it didn't work, you'd be frantic for a replacement.


3. I guarantee that hindsight will always be 20-20. Buyers remorse will set in. Beatification of the old system is a natural stage of change.

I've met the new heads at SirsiDynix and Ex Libris North America. Good guys. Without being too critical of their predecessors, I think they get the market that they have entered. I hope we're past the whole "what do they know about libraries" whining. At worst, anyone new to this market knows as little about libraries as libraries know about business. And this is, at the end of the day, business. I've told them both directly that they have to get a message out, not just to their customers but to their staff. More on that in a minute.

In the meantime, their competition is hardly slowing down or waiting for the dust to settle. In just the last couple weeks, LibLime has signed the INCOLSA consortium in Indiana and the Central Kansas Library Consortium. Other vendors are marketing themselves as the "stable choice." Frankly, I don't think stability automatically extends to those who have not had a big shake-up. Sometimes, on the contrary, they are simply next on the list for change. (This is only a general prediction and is not aimed at any particular vendor.)

I think "the money people" entering this market can be in danger of thinking they are getting into the software business when what they might really be buying is a relationship company. If your library falls under #2 above, then your vendor is in the relationship business. Would that more next-generation software came out of the library automation marketplace; but I still believe that it does not have to come from there. What these companies need now is strong leadership. Some of them have credibility issues to deal with as well. Combining good leadership, good standing, and good software is a tall order.

Maybe I love disorder because I see it as job security. For many others, it is the status quo and has meant security, but not so in IT. I think it's worth reading what the director of the Digital Library Federation thinks about the status quo. There's some provocative stuff in there. I agree 100% with 75% of it. Or maybe I agree 75% with 100% of it. I'm not quite sure.

Maybe it's better to say that the hatred of change is the beginning of disaster.

I am willing to admit that I remain skeptical about the "one big pile" approach to next generation catalogs that is sweeping the library automation world. While I don't agree that advanced relevance ranking techniques are ineffective on bibliographic records (go look, there is no literature that I can find on this topic...there's tons on full-text, but nothing on surrogate record relevance), I wonder what happens when the catalog becomes more than it used to be.

If a relevance algorithm is based on whether or not a library holds a title, what happens when an article is thrown in the mix? How does/will Google's relevance algorithm work when the body of content is 20M books and 20M articles?

One development I am encouraged by comes from our friends at Bowker Syndetics, the folks who have been enriching catalog records for several years now. Traditionally, catalog enrichment with things like book jackets, Tables of Contents (TOCs), reviews, etc., is done on the fly by tying content to something like an ISBN. Of course, the problem with enriching records on the fly is that the content of the enrichment is not part of the retrieval process.

Traditionally, the way around this has been to dump tons of data into the MARC record itself—the perfect example of tradition stunting progress. Our profession's obsession with "the record"—not MARC, but the record itself—has led to missed opportunities, both philosophical and technological.

Syndetics now has an interesting compromise, called ICE (Indexed Content Enrichment). What if you could have all the enrichment and index it with your MARC data? New catalogs—AquaBrowser, Endeca, Primo, and Encore—will certainly help this idea along. It may even be what led Bowker to see Medialab (creator of AquaBrowser) as a nice little acquisition opportunity.

Calling all researchers! Let's not make the mistake that some of the vendors and showroom floor demo wizards are. We need more research in this area. Indexing first chapters, reviews, tables of contents, flyleafs, and annotations—and turning media awards and fiction files into faceted navigation elements—does not necessarily improve relevance ranking. It can provide recall where there was none before, but relevance is something different. And how will any of this compare with full-text (especially book-length text) relevance ranking?

Is Bowker onto something? I got to thinking about all the hub-bub over BISAC codes in the public library space. Then I thought about Bowker owning Books in Print and all this enrichment content. They and others are also heavily involved in the ONIX standard for publishers. Then I recalled that AquaBrowser has a deal with LibraryThing for tagging and other content. Throw in a little ICE and you've got a pretty interesting cocktail, making this a more intriguing battle:

BIP + ONIX + BISAC + ICE + LibraryThing vs. MARC

Throw in all the full text that is coming at us and all bets could be off. Think about the fact that Bowker is part of the Cambridge Information Group which also owns CSA, ProQuest IL, and RefWorks; and now Bowker owns AquaBrowser. Boy, all Bowker needs is an ILS for a soup-to-nuts package. I reckon there's one or two for sale out there.

This is the third and final installment of "What's Next" for the library automation marketplace. Time to review: Major consolidation of the library automation market, the emergence of viable open source software solutions and new business models for supporting them, and a somewhat rancorous and impatient customer base that fears that profit and efficiency have out-gunned innovation and service. This is the making for a dangerous cocktail. What's a vendor to do? What's a library to do?

The Prod
IMHO, I suspect that most libraries are going to sit tight. As have been mentioned many times, the pain and expense of moving systems is in the move itself. This gives vendors a little time (a little time) to breathe and think. If you want to make an organization move, you have to use more carrots and fewer sticks. So far, I see mostly sticks.

Some vendors, including the open source providers, will still be moving quickly to capitalize on discontent, and they will likely reap some rewards from that. Some libraries will want to take some risks, make a statement, or just try something new. Witness: University of Washington and WorldCat Local, British Columbia and Evergreen, the eXtensible Catalog project led by the University of Rochester, and PennTags.

Business Is Business
Back to consolidation and a dirty truth that no one ever wants to talk about: Most humans have an instinctive self-preservation reaction to change. The mergers and product announcements instill selfish reaction—"How will this affect me?" How do you think it feels to be working for a vendor when this happens? Dozens of people have lost their jobs in the last several months. And there will be more. We can be disappointed about a development opportunity missed, another path trod down a dead end, and time wasted, but at least most of us are not looking for new jobs in a shrinking market.

Ken Chad, a colleague who has been around the ILS (or LMS, as they say in the UK) block a time or two, has been writing and commenting on equity ownership in the marketplace. He has also asked the question of why equity firms are interested in a market that is not that rich.

So why would these underperforming companies be of interest to, for example, private equity investors who will need a good short-term return on their investment? Well precisely because they are underperforming there is scope for cost savings through product rationalisation and staff reductions especially when a merger takes place.

–Ken Chad, CILIP Gazette, March 2007

It has been suggested to me, on occasion, that ownership does not matter. I don't believe this. Though it's true that equity ownership in this space is nothing new, I think who owns your vendor is important. I also do not mean to lump all equity firms together in one pile, just as I would not talk about two founder-owned CEOs interchangeably (despite the fact that I think these folks share several characteristics...but that is a topic for another day). I only mean to say that ownership structure and motivation are important factors in assessing directions for libraries.

Private equity firms will no doubt add to a company's efficiency and (perhaps) profitability (keeping in mind that some of "efficiency" is a euphemism for "downsizing"). Other privately held companies will be competing with those that are cost cutting and still providing competitive product. Will any of these companies innovate? Can they afford to? Someone will ask....do we need them to?

My answer to that last question remains a firm "yes." Not every library is going to embrace open source or try to build something on their own. Some still want a "library-in-a-box" and not a platform that supports openness, modularity, and integration with 2nd-tier products and services. On the other hand, a lot of libraries want all of those things. I think the chips will go to the company that can do both. I don't think either the open source side or the proprietary side are there yet.

Who will fund research and development in this new era? If we're already paying a vendor, how much of that money is going into R&D and how much into operations? Is this new era one of continued co-dependence or co-development? If it's the latter, how do we make sure that we are asking for the right things?

No Sitting on Hands
The challenge for libraries is realizing that perfect is the enemy of good. We will have to take the risks that matter. We will have to formulate exit strategies for IT solutions, or embrace decisions to stay the course. I myself have to tear down the poster on my wall that reads: "Indecision is the key to flexibility."

It's true that I am one of the skeptics. I'll state that up front. But, in truth, my skepticism toward building an open source integrated library system was born in optimism that the vendors of proprietary software would be paying close attention to the landscape. Alas, I don't think they were.

Some tried
Most people have forgotten that Dynix wrote a white paper in 2003 called "Horizon Open Technology: A Vision for the Future" that was the basis of the original Horizon 8.0 (I looked all over for this white paper online and had to fall back on my own archive). The system would use Lucene and uPortal, and would support interchangeable back-end databases. The architecture was going to be open and modular. Within months of Dynix's merger with Sirsi, Lucene was replaced with FAST, and uPortal was replaced with options like Horizon Information Portal and Sirsi's Enterprise Portal System (EPS). But that's all academic now that Horizon 8.0, too, belongs to the ages.

Another key aspect of open systems is the growth in open source technology. Not all open source technology is good, but there is tremendous promise here. Operating systems (Linux), application servers (JBoss), and search engines (Lucene) are among the more powerful open source developments that Dynix believes holds great promise and which the company intends to leverage.

–excerpt from 2003 Dynix Whitepaper

VTLS continues to tout its open source components, and was one of the first vendors to repackage Fedora (an open source repository application) and brand it Vital, essentially selling some of the interfaces and support for the underlying open source architecture.

Talis, a UK-based ILS company, continues to make strides in its support of open source services. The Talis Platform is the basis for many open source add-ons, thought the company's ILS itself remains a proprietary system. Nevertheless, Talis remains nearly alone among "traditional" vendors proselytizing open source solutions.

Some finish
I've mentioned Koha and Evergreen on this blog and on the pages of American Libraries many times. LibLime has made some success of installing Koha at smaller libraries. Evergreen, the open source ILS created for the Georgia PINES consortium of public libraries, is now supported by its creators through a new company called Equinox. Roy Tennant called this "The Dawn of a New Era." I prefer to call it a potential tipping point.

The open source tipping point
Libraries and open source are like peanut butter and chocolate to many people. Our altruistic nature, penchant for openness, and shoestring budgets make libraries a virtual Petrie dish for open source experimentation. OSS4LIB has been around for nearly (over?) seven years. Many libraries are probably using open source software without even realizing it . . . things like Linux and apache, sendmail or Zotero.

So, where's the tipping point? Well, it might just be the commodity status that I mentioned in starting off this series. The authors of a book called Open Source 2.0 suggest as much. That is, when the software reaches commodity status, companies will emerge to provide services associated with that software. Redhat's Linux is a very good example of this. The question is whether the ILS has reached this point yet. It could very well be barreling in that direction.

Some paradox
Still, there is the skeptic in me. I am inclined to ask some baiting questions and point out what I think are some serious issues in the open source movement. I think there is still a "build or buy" paradox in going the open source route. While the services that support open source are bound to be cheaper than buying a proprietary ILS, libraries will have to ask themselves why they want an open source system. It could be philosophical—either in wanting to support a move toward openness, or in wanting software that supports easier local development and add-ons. It could be financial, or the idea that "good enough" is often just that. The point is to make an informed decision—one that is based on the freedom of open source and not its relative free-ness.

There is also what I call the "marketing paradox." You will hear from open source vendors that one of the benefits of using open source is that if you are unsatisfied with the associated services, you can just get them from someone else without having to change software. I don't want to downplay this benefit: It would be great to not have to migrate every time there is a bump in the road. And let's face it, there have been a lot of bumps lately. Nevertheless, this is a cultural change for libraries, but one that I think we should be open to. The good news for libraries is that the marketing of these services within this framework should naturally keep costs down, especially as more open source–supporting organizations emerge.

Finally, there is the issue of patents. MySQL's Marten Mickos called them the Achilles heel of the entire software industry (see this interesting article from last summer's internetnews.com). Practically the opposite of open source reaction, patents create a visceral response from most librarians—though I would argue that libraries are as likely to rid themselves of patented hardware and software as they are to rid themselves of copyrighted content in their stacks. How patents will impact the library software market and library software development remains to be seen. I eagerly await a thorough treatment of this topic (from a library point of view) from someone much more educated on the subject than I am.

Software is software
I have been relegated to quoting myself quoting someone else, but I first pointed this out in a column last fall. Dan Chudnov, creator of OSS4LIB, was the one who gave me this truism: [added text] software is software. This led me to think that [end of added text] it does not matter whether the software is open or proprietary; what matters is whether the software is good or bad. Those are my words, not his, but they are meant to capture [added text] what I took away from that conversation [added text] the essence of what he said to me over five years ago (some things just stick with you).

At the end of the day, the software has to work. If it doesn't work, you have to be able to make it work. If open source makes for a better path to making things work, then all the better. If competition from open source makes vendors or closed-source systems more alert and responsive, then all the better. Better is good.