Google yesterday introduced video chat to the web-based version of it’s Google Talk app (think GMail), but doesn’t appear to interoperate with any of the many existing video chat apps, iChat and Skype tops among them.

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.

AALL, American Association of Law Libraries, future libraries, ILS, interoperability, lib20, libraries, library 2.0, Nicole Engard, standards, Steve Lawson

I can’t help but like microformats, and part of that comes from the dogmatic principles that drive them. Among those is the notion that none of us should attempt to create a format out of whole cloth. Here’s how they explain it:

Under the title of “Propose a Microformat” they tell us: “Actually, DON’T!!!”

ask yourself: “are there any well established, interoperably implemented standards we can look at which address this problem?”

Why? The dogma here is to “pave the cowpaths:”

It’s quite possible [...] that you’ll find someone else who has dealt with the problem you’re addressing. Perhaps even solved it. Do your best to open a dialog with others who have encountered the same problem. We don’t want to build walls between competing communities — we want people to work together to develop a good solution which will cover the majority of cases.

Now think about this in the context of libraries. Think about it in terms of our acquisitions workflow, think about it in terms of our online catalogs. Break down the walls that divide libraries from the rest of the world, look for and embrace larger standards, and benefit from the community of work that already supports them.

microformat, dogma, lessons, software development, standards, interoperability