Terry’s Worklog

Given that I sometimes give III a bit of a hard time (which I think is part of our job as users) — I thought I would note some of the very cool things that are out in the 2006 general release:

• RightResults(tm): III’s new relevance ranking algorthem.  I’d talked about this earlier — but this is very cool.  Actually getting your results back in some kindof useable order — what a concept.
• Spelling Suggestions:  This was very well done.  They took the basic spell checking format and then enhanced it allowing for multiple suggestions and combinations of suggestions.
• Web Edit:  This is a web-based cataloging client.  Its basically a poor man’s Connexion — but for what it does within the catalog and the potential areas of use — this is a pretty nifty new product. 
• RSS (input and output):  For free, III will include an RSS reader in the new WebPac.  For a fee, you can purchase a new product called Feed Builder to create newbook lists, etc.  I’m not too thrilled that this is a fee-based product, but the fact that they have finally got this working is great.
• User Reviews:  Users can now put reviews on books (in addition to ratings (from 2005))
• Research Pro updates:  Metafind has been renamed and improved.  They still are licensing the software/connectors from Muse Global — but they have done some development that has made their software better and allowed users a bit more flexibility in how the interface is developed.
• WebPAC Pro — this is the new webpac platform

III has released a number of other new features and enhancements — but these have been the one’s that caught my eye (and that I’m remember off the top of my head).  I have been pretty impressed by some of the ILS improvements that they have pushed out this time around. 

–tr

I just finished sitting through a session on the current upgrade to the WebOpac.  They are actually looking to do some pretty cool stuff in the realms of adding community tagging, rss feeds (though it is additional for fee product if you want to publish data from your catalog) and faceted searches.  Its really be developed in two phases.  The first phase is this year (and is already available to beta sites), and includes the rss and community reviewing componets — but next year we will see the release of a new development platform that will sit ontop of the opac and more tightly integrate III services.  For III libraries that are completely III libraries (i.e., use Millennium, Webbridge, Metafind (now called Research Pro), Symposium (III’s IR software)) — this platform sounds fairly interesting in that III is looking to provide a single search box which integrates all the III results.  However, it looks like libraries that have gone outside of III for services will be penalized to some degree as only parts of the new platform would be available to those libraries.  For example, in the meeting today, someone asked how the system would work for users that do not have Webbridge or Research Pro.  The answer — the platforms functionality would be drastically reduced — which seems to imply that if you want your services to work together, you should be planning on purchasing III’s products.  The only potentially good thing about this is that given that this new platform will sit ontop of the current opac, there is a chance that III might start releasing some API information detailing how their service is interacting with their system.  If they do make such documentation available — I’ll be one happy camper.  Otherwise, it might make our current metasearch/openURL development a harder sell — depending on how much outside interoperability III still allows vs. the ease of being an all III shop. 

Anyway, since I’m unsure how much information III is making available about this development product at this time (outside of this very general information which has been available since MidWinter) – I’ll leave it at that and say that anyone interested should visit their booth come ALA where they hope to be demo’g parts of this new product platform.

–tr

I enjoy the IUG reception — its a great time to get to chat with some of the folks from III and chat with friends.  Last night’s reception was really good — partly because I got to have a good conversation with Ted Fons — one of the many III product managers.  I like Ted, partly because you can tell that Ted does really understand the products that he manages — and it shows to some degree.  My favorite product that he manages has to be their ERM product — partly because of the shear amount of time it seems to be saving — but that’s neither here nor there.  I chatted with Ted a lot of about interoperability — or III’s lack their of.  The main thing that we talked about was just simply doing some little things to make III a little bit easier to work with — maybe an SRU server or folding the xml server into the ILS by default.  Little things that could help III libraries look to do a little outside development — maybe place widgets into their opac or develop handy new tools that other III libraries would find interesting.  Its really win-win for III and I hope they eventually realize it.  Its always a good model when you have your user community participating in the development/extension process and I know that there are a lot of folks in the III community that would relish the opportunity to work outside the III black box.

I don’t necessarily blame III either for their model — partly because its a model that the library community has fostered and developed for years.  To some degree, librarians have asked our vendors to do everything and make it as transparent as possible.  This transparency has come at the cost of interroperability.   I think at this point, I’d like to see libraries pushing vendors to move to make the ILS and its associated parts simply commodities.  This way you could pick and choose the best modules from all the vendors and they would work because they all provide a set of standard api.  Not likely to happen, I know — so maybe we start smaller by getting our own vendors to at least be more open with their own customers.  Unfortunately, this is a change that I fear will happen very slowly.

Anyway — it was a good chat — and I hope Ted finds a little time to enjoy the conference between presentations.

–tr

Its about that time again for the IUG’s annual usergroup meeting.  This year, the annual meeting is at the Hyatt Regency in Denver, Co and will last for a few days.  I got in yesterday and the weather was definitely gorgeous.  It was 87ish yesterday and almost 90 today.  A little hot for my tastes this early in the year — but definitely better that freezing rain or something. 

Anyway — I’ll post my throughts throughout the conference and will post a conference wrapup sometime after I come home.

–Terry