Vendor Fare Good but Light at ALA's Midwinter Meeting

New product announcements were scarce at the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting, San Diego, January 9–14, a surprising occurrence as little was unveiled during the previous summer's annual conference. Still, it was a case of quality not quantity for the new products that did debut. Although one would be hard pressed to find a more alluring locale, attendance was down several thousand from last year's gathering in Philadelphia. The upcoming Public Library Association conference in Seattle may have also contributed to the falloff.

Those numbers were reflected in painfully light show floor traffic throughout the weekend (see News , p. 16ff., for our exhibits report). Attendees' apparent lack of interest in the show floor belied the quality of the exhibits.

The ALA show floor is a hot spot to get the early buzz on the next big area of development in the library automation field. San Diego found numerous vendors talking about RFID. While VTLS, Checkpoint, and only a few others pioneered RFID, you can bet other vendors will be following suit and that technology quickly will become a standard feature in all ILS systems. The buzz is never wrong.

Portals (a buzzword from several years ago) continue to make headway, and more and more content and features are being pumped into the new generation of über-OPACs. Metadata—yet another past hot topic—is still setting fires among both catalogers and database developers. Look for future developments in both areas.