–TR

–TR

–TR

In a time when green computer seems to be gaining traction everywhere, the current disposable PC trend seems to fly in its face.  And I’m no better in this regard.  I too would like an ultra-portable device and am in the group looking for something on the higher end scale (I want something that will perform better than a PDA) and there’s the dilemma.  This class of machines simply is disposable by default due to the nature of the beast.  Keep size down, keep price down — and performance suffers.  When performance suffers — performance lust sets in and the cycle repeats.  A great cycle for investors, maybe, but not for those wanting live a little greener.

Anyway, random thoughts for a Thursday,

–TR

So, after getting up way to early this morning, I staggered my way down to the LITA Top Tech Trends discussion this morning.  Unfortunately, it seemed like a number of other folks did the same thing as well, so I only ended up hanging out for a little bit.  I just don’t have the stamina in the morning to live through cramped quarters, poor broadband and no caffeine.  I get enough of that when I fly (which I get to do tomorrow).  Fortunately, a number of folks who had been asked to provide tech trends have begun (or have been) posting their lists and some folks who braved the early morning hours have started blogging their response (here).  I personally wasn’t asked to provide my list of tech trends, but I’m going to anyway, as well as comment on a few of the trends either posted or discussed during the meeting.  Remember, this is just one nuts list, so take it for what it is.

1. Ultra-light and small PCs (Referenced from Karen Coombs)
   Karen is one of a number of folks that has taken note of a wide range of low-cost computers currently being made available to the general public.  These machines, which run between $189-$400, provide low-cost, portable machines that have the potential to bring computers to a wider audience.  I’ll have to admit, I’m personally not sold on these machines, in part because of the customer-base that they are aiming for.  Companies such as EeePC note that these machines are primarily targeted to users that are looking for a portable second machine and kids/elderly looking for a machine simply to surf the web.  A look at the specifications for many of these low cost machines are celerion class processors with 512 MB of RAM with poor graphics processing.  Is this good enough for web surfing or browsing the web?  I’d argue, no.  The current and future web is a rich environment, built on CSS, XML, XSLT, flash, java, etc.  I think what people seem to forget is that this rich content takes a number of resources to simply view.  Case in point — I setup a copy of Centos  on a 1.2 MHz Centrino with 512 MB RAM and a generic graphics card (8 Mb of shared memory) and while I could use this machine to browse the web and doing office work with Open office, I certainly wouldn’t want to.  Just running the Linux shell was painful, but web browsing is clunky and office work is basically unusable — essentially, surpassing the machine’s capabilities right out of the box.  Is this the type of resource I’d want to be lending to my patrons…probably not since I wouldn’t want my patrons to associate my library’s technical expertise with sub-standard resources.  Does this mean that ultra-portables will not be in vogue this year and the next?  Well, I didn’t say that.  A look at the success the IPhone is having (a pocket PC retailing for close to $1500 without a contract) seems to indicate that users are wanting to and willing to pay a premium price for portability — so long as that portability doesn’t come at too high of a price. 
   
2. Branding outside services as our own (and branding in general)
   There was a little bit of talk about this — the idea of moving specific services outside the library to services like Google or Amazon, and essentially, rebranding them.  This makes some sense — however, I always cringe when we start talking about branding and how to make the library more visible.  From my perspective, the library is already too visible, i.e., intrusive into our users lives.  Libraries want to be noticed, and we want our patrons and organizations to see where the library gives them value.  It’s a necessary evil in times when competition for budget dollars is high.  However, I think it does our users a disservice.  Personally, I’d like to see the library become less visible — providing users direct access to information without the need to have the library’s finger prints all over the process.  We can make services that are transparent (or mostly transparent), and we should. 

   The same thing goes for our vendors.  I’ll use III as an example only because we are an Innovative Library so I’m more  familiar with their software.  By all rights, Encore is a serviceable product that will likely make III a lot of money.  However, of the public instances currently available (Michigan State, Nashville Public Library), the III branding is actually larger than that of the library (if the library branding shows up as well).  And this is in no way unique to III.  Do patrons care what software is being used?  I doubt it.  Should they care?  No.  They should simply be concerned that it works, and works in a way that it doesn’t get in in their way.  From my perspective, branding is just one more thing that gets in the way.
   

3. Collections as services will change the way libraries do collection development
   I’m surprised that we don’t here more about this — but I’m honestly of the opinion that metadata portability and the ability for libraries to build their collections as web services will change the way libraries do collection development.  In the past, collection development was focused primarily on what could be physically or digitally acquired.  However, as more organizations move content online (particularly primary resources), libraries will be able to shift from an acquisitions model to a services model.  Protocols like OAI-PMH make it possible (and relatively simple) for libraries to actively “collect” content from their peer institutions in ways that were never possible in the past. 
   
4. Increased move to outside library IT and increased love for hosted services (whether we want them or not)
   While it has taken a great deal of time, I think it is fair to say that libraries are more open to the idea of using Open Source software than ever before.  In the short term, this has been a boon for library IT departments, which has seen an investment in hardware and programmer support.  I think this investment in programming support will be short-lived.  In some respects, I see libraries going through their own version of the .COM boom (just, without all the money).  Open Source is suddenly in vogue.  Sexy programs like Evergreen have made a great deal of noise and inroads into a very traditionally vendor oriented community.  People are excited and that excitement is being made manifest by the growing number of software development positions being offered within libraries.  However, at some point, I see the bubble bursting.  And why?  Because most libraries will come to realize that either 1) having a programmer on staff is prohibitively expensive or 2) that the library will be bled dry by what I’ve heard coined by Kyle Banerjee as vampire services.  What is a vampire service?  A vampire service is a service that consumes a disproportional number of resources but will not die (generally for political reasons).  One of the dangers for libraries employing developers is the inclination to develop services as part of a grant or grandiose vision, that eventually becomes a vampire service.  They bleed an organization dry and build a culture that is distrustful of all in-house development (see our current caution looking at open source ILS systems.  It wasn’t too long ago that a number of institutions used locally developed [or open] ILS systems and the pain associated with those early products still affects our opinions of non-vendor ILS software today). 

   But here’s the good news.  Will all software development position within the library go away?  No.  In fact, I’d like to think that as position within individual organizations become more scarce — that consortia will move to step into this vacated space.  Like many of our other services moving to a network level, I think that the centralization of library development efforts would be a very positive outcome, in that it would help to increase collaboration between organizations and reduce the number of projects that are all trying to re-invent the same wheel.  I think of our own consortia in Oregon and Washington– Summit — and the dynamic organization it could become if only the institutions within it would be willing to give over some of their autonomy and funding to create a research and development branch within the consortia.  Much of the current development work (not all) could be moved up to the consortia level allowing more members to directly benefit from the work done. 

   At the same time, I see the increase of hosted services on the horizon.  I think that folks like LibLime really get it.  Their hosted services for small to medium size libraries presumably reduce LibLime’s costs to manage and maintain the software and those hosted libraries from the need to worry about hardware and support issues.  When you look at the future of open source in libraries — I think that this is it.  For every one organization willing to run open source within their library, there will be 5 others that will only be able to feasibly support that infrastructure if it is outsourced as a hosted service.  We will see a number of open source projects move this direction.  Hosted services for Dspace, Fedora, metasearch, the ILS — these will all continue to emerge and grow throughout this year and into the next 5 years.  And we will see the vendor space start to react to this phenomenon as well.  A number of vendors, like III, already provide hosted services.  However, I see them making a much more aggressive push to compel their users (higher licensing, etc) to move to a hosted service model. 
   

5. OCLC will continue to down the path to becoming just another vendor
   I’d like nothing more than to be wrong, but I don’t think I am.  Whether its this year, the next or the year after that, OCLC will continue to alienate its member institutions, eventually losing the privileged status libraries have granted it throughout the years, becoming just another vendor (though a powerful one).  Over the last two years, we’ve seen a lot of happenings come from Dublin, Ohio.  There was the merger of RLG, the hiring of many talented librarians, WorldCat.org, WorldCat Local and OCLC’s newest initiatives circulating around their grid services.  OCLC is amassing a great deal of capital (money, data, members) and I think we will see how they intend to leverage this capital this year and the next.  Now, how they leverage this capital will go a long way to deciding what type of company OCLC will be from here forward.  Already, grumblings are being heard within the library development community as OCLC continues to move to build new revenue streams from webservices made possible only through the contribution of metadata records from member libraries.  As this process continues, I think you will continue to hear grumblings from libraries who believe that these services should be made freely available to members, since it was member dollars and time that provided OCLC exclusively with the data necessary to develop these services.  **Sidebar, this is something that we shouldn’t over look.  If you’re library is an OCLC member, you should be paying close attention to how OCLC develops their grid services.  Remember, OCLC is suppose to be a member driven organization.  It’s your organization.  Hold it accountable and make your voice heard when it comes to how these services are implemented.  Remember, OCLC only exists through the cooperative efforts of both OCLC and the thousands of member libraries that contribute metadata to the database.**  Unfortunately, I’m not sure what OCLC could do at this point to retain this position of privilege.  Already, too many people that I talk to see OCLC as just another vendor that doesn’t necessarily have the best interests of the library community at heart.  I’d like to think that they are wrong — that OCLC still remains an organization dedicated to furthering libraries and not just OCLC.  But at this point, I’m not sure we know (or they know).  What we do know is that there are a number of dedicated individuals that came to OCLC because they wanted to help move libraries forward — let’s hope OCLC will continue to let them do so.  And we watch, and wait.

Anyway, that’s my list of trends.

–TR

Because I’ve been doing a lot of work with MarcEdit and plug-ins, I thought I’d post some sample code for anyone interested in how this might work.  Essentially, the sample project includes 3 parts — a host application, a set of Interfaces and a Shared library.  Making this work requires a couple of important parts. 

First, the host application (either the form or class), need to implement the set of interfaces.  So for example, if interaction with a form in the hosted application was need, you would configure the form to implement a set of interfaces.  This would look like:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace HostApp
{
public partial class Form1 : Form, HostInterfaces.IHost
{
//...
}

This implements the IHost class (link to msdn) — a generic class that allows you to

pass objects between dynamically loaded libraries.  .NET includes a IScript interface that allows for scripting functionality as well. 

Anyway, the interfaces are simply like delegates — they define the visible functions/methods that will be accessible to a foreign assembly.  This is the simpliest file to create.  It looks something like this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

}
}
Finally, the Dynamic assembly has the ability to work with any function/object within the host application that has been made public through the interface.  For this sample project, I’ve shown how to modify a label (on the host application), add a button to a toolbar and respond to click events from that button. 

The project is a simple one — but should go a long way towards showing how this works.

Cheers,

–TR

Technorati Tags: C#,plug-ins,interfaces

<v007 i2=" " i1=" " im="0">
  <sa>
    <d>s</d>
  </sa>
  <sb>
    <d>d</d>
  </sb>
  <sd>
    <d>f</d>
  </sd>
  <se>
    <d>s</d>
  </se>
  <sf>
    <d>n</d>
  </sf>
  <sg>
    <d>g</d>
  </sg>
  <sh>
    <d>n</d>
  </sh>
  <si>
    <d>n</d>
  </si>
  <sj>
    <d>z</d>
  </sj>
  <sk>
    <d>u</d>
  </sk>
  <sl>
    <d>u</d>
  </sl>
  <sm>
    <d>u</d>
  </sm>
  <sn>
    <d>d</d>
  </sn>
</v007>

I’ll admit — I have no idea why they went with this format.  From my perspective, its clunky.  The 007, as a single control field, is fairly easy to parse as it can have up to 13 bytes, with number of bytes specified 0 byte of the data element.  In this format, you actually have to create 9 different templates for the different possibilities in order to account for different field lengths, byte combinations and delimiter settings.  Honestly, my first impression when looking at this was that its a perfect example of how something so simple can become much more difficult than need be.  Personally, I would have been happier had they broke from their MARCXML like syntax for this one field to create an special 007 element.  Again, this is something that could have been easily abstracted in the XSLT translation — but to be fair, I don’t think that they figured anyone but OCLC’s connexion team would ever be trying to work with this. 

So how I’m solving it?  Well, one of the cool things working with XSLT (and .NET in general) is the ability to use extensions to help fill in missing functionality in the XSLT language (in my case, the ms:script extension in the msxml library).  Since this transformation isn’t one that I’m really sharing (outside the plug-in), I’m not too worried about its portability.  So, what I’ve done is created a number of helper C# functions and embedded them within the xslt document to aid processing.  For example,

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:marc="http://www.loc.gov/MARC21/slim"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
 xmlns:ms="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
 xmlns:osu="urn:oregonstate-edu:xslt"
 extension-element-prefixes="osu">
  <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" />
  <ms:script language="C#" implements-prefix="osu">
    <![CDATA[
        public int length(string s) {
          s = s.ToLower();
          if (s=="c") {
             return 14;
          } else if (s=="d") { return 6;}
          else if (s=="a") { return 8;}
          else if (s=="h") { return 13;}
          else if (s=="m") { return 10;}
          else if (s=="k") { return 6;}
          else if (s=="g") { return 9;}
          else if (s=="r") { return 11;}
          else if (s=="s") { return 14;}
          else if (s=="f") { return 10;}
          else if (s=="v") { return 9;}
          else { return 8;}
        }
      ]]>
  </ms:script>

This is a simple function that I’m using to track the number of elements needed for the processing template.  This is because I don’t want to create 9 different XSLT templates for each processing type, so I’m using some embedded C# to simplify the process.  On the plus side, using these embedded scripts make the translation process much faster on the .NET side (since .NET compiles xslt to byte code anyway before running any translation process), and this is a technique that I’ve never really had to use before so I was able to get a little practical experience.  Still don’t like it though.

–TR

The Wii, for those that haven’t had a chance to play, it a very different gaming experience.  The console sacrifices some of the high end graphics for simple gameplay and fun.  You have controllers that are motioned controlled, rather than primarily button controlled.  It looked fun, the boys seemed to get it, so we got one. 

We’ve had our Wii now for about a month, and I can tell you that Nintendo has a real winner here.  I’m actually sitting here right now watching my 2 year old play “boxing”.  He’s got fists of fury as he swings his arms around trying to “knock” out the cartoon characters on the screen.  Periodically, I’m hearing him telling me that he’s going to “knock his socks off”.  Funny to watch.  But its a system that he gets.  He doesn’t have to click buttons, just swing the controllers.  Simple interface.  Of course, we see this happening in other corners, yet we still find it surprising.  Gaming manufacturers, for example, are scrambling to get titles available for the Wii, in part because they assumed it would be a novelty and were surprised by its popularity.  I wasn’t — but I had my own little usability crew showing me exactly why the simplest interface almost always wins.

–TR

This question comes from two experiences recently.  First, at Midwinter in Seattle, a number of OSU folks and myself met with Innovative Interfaces regarding Encore (III’s “next generation” public interface in development) and the difficulty that we have accessing our data in real-time without buying additional software or access to the system (via access to API or in III’s case, access via a special XML Server).  The second meeting has been the current eXtensible Catalog meeting here in Rochester where I’ve been talking to a lot of folks that are currently looking at next generation library tools. 

Sitting here, listening to the XC project and other projects currently ongoing, I’m more convinced than ever that our public ILS, which was once the library communities most visible public success (i.e., getting our library catalogs online) — has become one of the library communities’ biggest liabilities — an albatross holding back our communities’ ability to innovate.  The ILS and how our patrons interact with the ILS shapes their view of the library.  The ILS, at least, the part of the system that we show to the public (or would like to show to the public – like web services, etc.) simply has failed to keep up with library patron or the library communities’ needs.  The internet and the ways in which our patrons interact with the internet have moved forward — while libraries have not.  Our patrons have become a savvy bunch.  They work with social systems to create communities of interest — often times, without even realizing it.  Users are driving the development and evolution of many services.  A perfect example to this has been Google Maps.  A service that in and of itself, isn’t too interesting in my opinion.  But what is interesting is the way in which the service has embraced user participation.  Google maps mashups liter the virtual world — to the point that the service (Google maps) has become a transparent part of the world that the user is creating.

So what does this have to do with libraries?  Libraries up to this point simply are not participating in the space that our users currently occupy.  Vendors, librarians — we are all trying to play catch-up in this space by brandishing about phrases like “next generation”, though I doubt anyone really knows what that means.  During one of my many conversations over the weekend, something that Andrew Pace said really stuck with me.  Libraries don’t need a next generation ILS; they need a current generation system.  Once we catch-up — then maybe we can start looking at ways to anticipate the needs of our community.  But until the library community creates a viable current generation system and catches-up, we will continue to fall further and further behind.

So how do we catch-up?  Is it with our vendors?  Certainly, I think that there is a path in which this could happen.  But it would take a tremendous shift in the current business models utilized by today’s ILS systems, but a shift that needs to occur.  Too many ILS systems make it very difficult for libraries to access their data outside of a few very specific points of access.  As an Innovative Interfaces library, our access points are limited based on the types of services we are willing to purchase from our vendor.  However, I don’t want to turn this specifically into a rant against the current state of ILS systems.  I’m not going to throw stones, because I live in a glass house that the library community created and has carefully cultivated to the present.  I think to a very large degree, the library community…no, I’ll qualify this, the decision makers within the library community — remember the time when moving to a vendor ILS meant better times for a library.  This was before my time — but I still hear decision makers within the library community apprehensive of library initiated development efforts because the community had “gone down that road” before when many organizations spun their own ILS systems and were then forced to maintain them over the long-term.  For these folks, moving away from a vendor controlled system would be analogous to going back to the dark ages.  The vendor ILS has become a security blanket for libraries — it’s the teddy bear that lets everyone sleep at night because we know that when we wake up, our ILS system will be running and if its not, there’s always someone else to call. 

With that said, our ILS vendors certainly aren’t doing libraries any favors.  NSIP, SRU/W, OpenSearch, web services – these are just a few standards that libraries could easily accommodate to standardize the flow of information into and out of the ILS, but find little support in the current vendor community.  RSS, for example, a simple protocol that now most IlS vendors support in one way or another, took years to finally be developed. 

Talking to an ILS vendor, I’d used the analogy that the ILS business closely resembles the PC business of the late 80’s, early 90’s when Microsoft made life difficult for 3rd-partly developers looking to build tools that competed against them.  Three anti-trust cases later (US, EU and Korean) and Microsoft is legally binded to produce specific documentation and protocols to allow 3rd-party developers the ability to compete on the same level as Microsoft themselves.  At which point, the vendor deftly noted that they have no such requirements, i.e., don’t hold your breath.  Until the ILS community is literately forced to provide standard access methods to data within their systems, I don’t foresee a scenario in which this will ever happen — at least in the next 10 years.  And why is that?  Why wouldn’t the vendor community want to enable the creation of a vibrant user community.  I’ll tell you — we are competitors now.  The upswing in open source development within libraryland has place the library community in the position of being competitors with our ILS vendors.  Dspace, Umlaut, LibraryFind, XC – these projects directly compete against products that our ILS vendors are currently developing or have developed.  We are encroaching into their space, and the more we encroach, the more difficult I predict our current systems will become to work with. 

A good example could be the Open source development of not one, but two main stream open source ILS products.  At this point in time, commercial vendors don’t have to worry about losing customers to open source projects like Koha and Evergreen, but this won’t always be the case.  And let me just say, this isn’t a knock against Evergreen or Koha.  I love both projects and am particularly infatuated with Evergreen right now – but the simple fact is that libraries have come to rely on our ILS systems (for better or worst) as acquisition systems, serial control systems, ERM systems — and with ILS vendors having little incentive to commoditize these functions.  This makes it makes it very difficult for an organization to simply move to or interact with another system.  For one, it’s expensive.  Fortunately, the industrious folks building Evergreen will get to the point where it will be a viable option and when it does, will the library community respond?  I hope so, but I wonder which large ACRL organization will have the courage to let go of their security blanket and make the move — maybe for the second time – to using an institutional supported ILS.  But get that first large organization with the courage to switch, and I think you’ll find a critical mass waiting and maybe, just maybe, it will finally breathe some competitive life into what has quickly become a very stale marketplace.  Of course, that assumes that the concept of an OPAC will still relevant – but that’s another post I guess.

Anyway, back to the meeting at Rochester.  Looking at the projects currently be described, there is an interesting characteristic of nearly all “next generation” opac projects.  All involve exporting the data out of their ILS.  Did you get that — the software that we are currently spending tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to do all kinds of magical things must be cut out of the equation when it comes to developing systems that interact with the public.  I think that this is the message that libraries and those making decisions about the ILS within libraries are missing.  A quick look around at folks recognized at creating current generation opacs (the list isn’t long) like NCState have one thing in common – the ILS has become more of an inventory management system, providing information relating to an item’s status, while the data itself is being moved outside of the ILS for indexing and display.

What worries me about current solutions being considered (like Endeca) is that they aren’t cheap and will not be available to every library.  NCState’s solution, for example, still requires NCState to have their ILS, as well as an Endeca license.  XC, an ambitious project with grand goals, may suffer from the same problem.  Even if the program is wildly successful and meets all its goals, implementers may still have a hard time selling their institutions on taking on a new project that likely won’t save the organization any money upfront.  XP partners will be required to provide money and time while still supporting their vendor systems.  What concerns me most about the current path that we are on is the potential to deepen already existing inequities that exist between libraries with funding and libraries without. 

But projects like XC, the preconference at Code4lib discussion Solr and Lucene — these are developments that should excite and encourage the library community.  As a community — we should continue to cultivate these types of projects and experimentation.  In part, because that’s what research organizations do — seek knowledge through research.  But also, to encourage the community to take a more active role when it comes to how our systems are developed and interact with our patrons.  

–TR 

–TR 

Link to Digital World Norway Outlaws iTunes