Point A: John Blyberg’s ILS Customer Bill-of-Rights.

Point B: Dan Chudnov’s The problem with the “ILS Bill of Rights”

Response: John Blyberg’s OPACs in the frying pan, Vendors in the fire

While there’s some disagreement between John and Dan, I can’t help but see a strong concordance between their posts: Both are an attempt to educate potential customers. Blyberg wants customers to know what to ask/look for in evaluating products, Dchud wants those customers to know how free markets work.

The rub comes from the fact that many people don’t feel libraries and ILS vendors exist in a free market, and Dchud is hopping mad that those people don’t realize that vendors won’t compete like it’s a free market until their customers start exercising some free-market sensibility (as suggested in his “you can choose NOT TO BUY THE FREAKIN’ PRODUCT” point).

I made some noise on this topic a while ago by asking people to take the pledge, but I’m also aware how difficult/unaproachable/distant/broken our purchasing processes are. Still, here’s an easy round up of what we should all take away from Dchud and Blyberg:

• Smart customers make better choices. Even if you don’t have tech staff now, make product purchases that open the door for them in the future.
   
• If you begin a purchase negotiation with the resigned notion that you must buy the product, then there really isn’t much to talk about, is there?

As Michael Stephens reminds us (in this post-Cluetrain world): markets are conversations. The authors are thinking of rather more vibrant markets than our ILS vendors enjoy, but there is a point there.

Purchase decisions on multi-hundred-thousand-dollar products are big, blunt instruments, but the risk that a current or potential customer might choose some other vendor’s system because it offers better value is an important one. That doesn’t mean that smart vendors won’t join the conversation before things go that far. It’s important to make sure your vendor knows what you want. And it’s important that you tell them.

conversations, customer, free market, lib20, libraries, library, library 2.0, markets, purchase decisions, purchases, vendor

Zach got a call from the Serena Collage rep who rattled off this list of customers in New England:

• Boston College
• Northeastern
• Bristol Community College
• UMass Lowell

cms, content management, web content management, serena, collage, serena collage, content management system, vendor, commercial cms

I feel a little misrepresented by a post from Talis’ Richard Wallis claiming you don’t need technology for Library 2.0 – but it helps, but the company blog doesn’t allow embedded URLs, so I’m posting my comment here:

Richard, please don’t misunderstand me. Technology is the essential infrastructure for Library 2.0. My point was that technology alone doesn’t make a library. It would be better to read my post in the context of Meredith Farkas‘ and Jenny Levine’s recent posts crying out for more programmers in libraries.

Meredith and Jenny are right, libraries need more technology help, but people like John Blyberg and me (and there are quite a few of us) need their help to demand better products from vendors. I say that because I think we can agree on this point: programmers at the customer end of the equation can’t win in the long-run against vendors who continue to deliver poorly designed products.

So while I advocate for change within our libraries, my challenge to vendors is clear: deliver flexible, extensible products that leverage working standards, not just “library standards.” There are many examples outside the library space showing the success of such efforts, use those examples, build on them. And the true lesson of Web 2.0 for you is that the vendor who opens up their product wins against others who impose barriers to remixing.

library, libraries, ils, vendor, talis, web 2.0, web20, lib20, library 2.0, library20, future, vision, open systems

CMS Market Watch tells us that there are 1,800 CMS vendors, and some of them are getting a little feisty.

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