ALA Midwinter Meeting Offers Mixed Tech Bag in Boston

As slow as molasses in winter. That old maxim now can be altered to "as slow as the Internet at Midwinter." The demo-destroying sluggishness of the show floor's net connection at Boston's Hynes Convention Center during the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting, January 14–17, received almost as much grumbling as the two-tier exhibits. All the top tech houses were ganged on the upper floor, which received little traffic despite an increase of several thousand attendees over the 2004 show in San Diego, while the ground floor exhibitors enjoyed droves of visitors (see News, p. 17).

Boston proved a typically quiet Midwinter, with few significant vendor announcements. Nonetheless, enough products and word of forthcoming ones made the show interesting. The hot topics at recent meetings—RFID, self-check, Wi-Fi, federated searching, and ebooks—continued to fire discussion, despite privacy concerns, rising costs, and infighting among vendors.

WebFeat's recent announcement of its patent on federated searching software (see InfoTech, LJ 1/05, p.35) generated rumors of lawsuits by WebFeat against other vendors. Although none would go on record, several vendors, who claim the software is public domain, indicated that they are initiating legal action to attempt to overturn the WebFeat patent.

ILS vendors in general, and the OPAC in particular, received their usual share of jabs. At RMG's Friday panel, many of the industry's CEOs were criticized for the lack of innovation coming out of ILS companies—although what librarians actually want is vague. The companies defended themselves by pointing out that the resources that go into providing the features libraries request during the RFP process—creating an industrywide "me, too" effect—divert from research and development (R&D).

Roland Dietz, Endeavor's CEO, off-handedly remarked that perhaps Endeavor should publish the code to Voyager and let librarians make their own enhancements, freeing the company to pursue digital initiatives. No one took Dietz seriously, as it's unlikely that there's a library in the country with the resources to work with the enormous Voyager code—and even so, it would still need service and support.

Further consolidation in the ILS market has been a regular show discussion, but this winter the talk reached a crescendo. Despite the pains of migration, some librarians thought it might be a good thing—releasing those elusive R&D dollars. Others were skeptical, predicting that it would just mean greater profit margins for venture capitalists. The most persistent rumor? That Endeavor would purchase Ex Libris, putting the top two linking products in the hands of Elsevier. Endeavor's Penny Emke flatly denied the rumor, telling LJ, "I have no announcement of Endeavor buying anybody or being bought by anybody," but said that Endeavor staffers enjoyed the attention it generated. "The rumor was great," Emke laughed.

Electronic resource management (ERM) is the "it" software among academic librarians, and until recently Innovative Interfaces had the only product on the market. That should change by ALA annual in Chicago in June. Ex Libris has brought out Verde, Endeavor just released Meridian, and Serials Solutions is beta-testing an ERM. RFID technologies continue to fascinate public librarians, and RFID vendors both large and small made a strong showing on the floor.

Alexander Street Press (ASP) is partnering with the Smithsonian Institution to deliver, as a streaming music service, the entirety of the historic Smithsonian Global Sound—an archive of over 35,000 individual tracks of music, spoken word, and sound recordings from around the world. ASP is using the software acquired through its 2004 purchase of the Classical Music Library to manage the collection. The firm will develop controlled vocabulary based on instrument, geography, cultural group, and other fields. ASP is liberating music from the music library and integrating it with its other products and the rest of the library—expect more developments in this area.

Where is the ILS headed? Endeavor is banking on improved usability, as the company announced an initiative that employs user-focused interface design and usability testing. As a Reed Elsevier company, Endeavor is able to draw on its parent's extensive resources, which engaged in extensive usability studies in the development of Scopus. Testing has already had an impact on the front ends of ENCompass for resource sharing, its metasearch tool, and Meridian, its ERM solution.

Checking out the Normative Data Project (NDP) from Sirsi, in partnership with the GeoLib Program at Florida State University, should head the "to-do" list of every public library manager. The project takes transaction-level data from libraries, links it with geographic and demographic data on communities served by these libraries, and produces numbers that can be compared with industry norms on circulation, collections, finance, and more. Moreover, it can help librarians better target materials to neighborhoods based on their demographics. Over 700 library outlets now contribute; plans are afoot to expand to over 2500 outlets. Top-level statistics will be freely available by the second quarter (www.librarynormativedata.info); access to NDP's full reporting and analyses will be via subscription.