Nicole Engard last month posted about The State of our ILS, describing the systems as:
I’d say it’s a like the crazy cousin you have to deal with because he’s family! It doesn’t fit, we are a very open IT environment, we have applications all over that need to talk to each other nicely and the [ILS] is a brick wall preventing us from getting the information we need and sending the information we’d like.
Nicole’s point about interoperability is well put, and the post is part of her preparation for conversation and discussion she hopes will go on at the American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting in July.
Coincidentally, I’ll be at AALL next month. My presentation will focus on the things we can do once we overcome the problems Nicole describes, but my concordance with her point should be clear (see previous posts one, two, three).
Extra: When will people who want to improve things not feel as though the ILS is against them, as in this post by Steve Lawson?
update: I keep forgetting to link to this public example of how bad our OPACs/ILSs are. Thanks go to David Walker for making me ROTFL.
One Comment
I am so happy to hear that someone will be at the conference who agrees with me. I will gladly send you a PDF of my post to pass on to the people who can make a difference if you’d like, just email me! Good luck! I hope to see some changes.
Also you may be interested in the response from III - read my post titled Touched a Nerve.
Thanks again!
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[...] I wrote yesterday of Nicole Engard’s comment that the ILS was about as open and flexible as a brick wall. Today I learned that the vendor of that ILS had tried to squash her public criticism. [...]
[...] June 14 - Squashing Criticism vs. Improving Products - Casey Bisson reacts to Nicole’s Post and follows up on his previous post, The ILS Brick Wall. I didn’t read Nicole’s June 1 post the same way as Casey–that is to say that I don’t see any indication that III was squashing criticism directed at them. They may be upset, but that doesn’t, in my mind, seem to indicate that III was trying to silence anyone. I mention this because if we (mis)interperate what III does or says and take it at anything but face-value, we run the risk of alienating them which is not at all productive. I have a suspicion that they’re already starting to feel a little like the family stone. The very fact that someone at III is reading blogs like Nicole’s is actually heartening to me since there’s been little evidence to suggest they’re even aware of a librarian’s blogosphere. [...]
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