               Tennant: Digital Libraries
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Picking When To JumpAugust 31, 2007 Frank Cervone has a nice piece in the July/August issue of Computers in Libraries called "ILS Migration in the 21st Century: Some New Things to Think About This Time Around" (it isn't online, but here's the citation). He's correct in identifying migration from one integrated library system (ILS) to another as being "cyclical in nature," and I think he's correct in predicting that we are entering another such cycle.Some of this need is being thrust on libraries by vendors pulling systems out from under them (no names here), while other libraries are simply getting antsy for a system that isn't written in Cobol (again, no names). For those with no choice, I wish you luck. 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. Why? Because the ILS market is clearly in upheaval, and anyone who chooses a new system at such a time is basically asking for it. Don't take my word for it, talk to Marshall Breeding, or Andrew Pace, both of whom know so much about the ILS market that it's scary. Some questions I have are: When will things settle down at SirsiDynix? How long will ExLbris be able to juggle both Voyager and Aleph? Will OCLC (my employer) make another attempt at this space after the failed try in the 80s? Is the market finished with mergers and acquisitions, or are there more deals in the making? Will the invesment firms behind ExLibris and SirsiDynix decide they'd prefer to liquidate assets than try to make a profit in this market? Do the open source options of Evergreen and Koha have enough community support to be good long-term solutions? These questions may show my ignorance more than my knowledge, but the very fact that at least some of these questions can be credibly asked by someone who tries to pay attention is telling. Posted by Roy Tennant on August 31, 2007 | Comments (4) Industries: News & Features
August 31, 2007
In response to: Picking When To Jump Dan Scott commented: A bit of a paradox you've set up there - if everyone listens to your advice to wait and see if a community will develop around Evergreen or Koha, well, I guess it would be pretty much impossible for a community to develop.
September 1, 2007
In response to: Picking When To Jump jrochkind commented: "Will OCLC (my employer) make another attempt at this space"
September 5, 2007
In response to: Picking When To Jump K.G. Schneider commented: I can't see Evergreen "withering" as long as it is deemed useful for an entire statewide system, and Koha seems to get plenty of users as well. When people aren't getting what they want from an ILS, open source becomes a very sensible alternative. With open code, you can always hire enough programmers to maintain and develop it -- particularly after you've changed your development paradigm from paying vendors to paying programmers to do the work.
September 13, 2007
In response to: Picking When To Jump John Miller commented: Just for the sake of the historical record, you might want to refer to OCLC's failed TRIES, rather TRY, in the 80s. I worked for a regional OCLC-supposting network then and knew the OCLC staffer in charge of marketing local systems. I recall her mentioning at one state library conference that this was her third year in a row pitching OCLC local systems at the conference, but that it had been a different system each time. It was pretty funny, at or least seemed so at the time.
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