"Berkeley Accord" Maps Route to Opening Library Data Silos

The Digital Library Federation (DLF) has announced (through the blog of DLF Executive Director Peter Brantley) details of the progress towards creating a discovery API for library automation systems.

For a generation now libraries have been amassing data in our integrated library systems using a mix of proprietary technology from the vendor community and our own arcane standards. For years now this value-added "stuff" has been locked away from the public Internet (and our patrons) in data "silos".

Last year the DLF put together an ILS-Discovery Interface Task Force to work out a way to expose library ILS data to Internet searches. The resulting proposed API (application programming interface) would use standard, open protocols and technologies to provide a common means to harvest bibliographic content and holdings information as well as provide a stable URL link to ILS records.

Last month the task force secured the support of most of the major vendors in the library market, with the notable exception of Innovative Interfaces (which abstained) to a document which they are calling the Berkeley Accord (after the location of the meeting at the Faculty Club at UC Berkeley).

Here are the ten signatories:

1. Talis
2. Ex Libris
3. LibLime
4. BiblioCommons
5. SirsiDynix
6. Polaris Library Systems
7. VTLS
8. California Digital Library
9. OCLC
10. AquaBrowser

If this project succeeds, it will rank with the creation of the MARC standard in its importance to libraries.

As long as library data falls short of full access from Internet discovery, we will be an extra step away from our patrons, many of whom will not take it.

It reminds me of the rail system in Los Angeles, which stops several miles short of the airport, leaving customers to take a bus the rest of the way, and providing a big opening for the airport shuttle business. We have competitors, too!

(Thanks to Eric Lease Morgan and the NGC4LIB listserv for spreading the news!)

Santa Cruz Library System Selects Koha ILS

The Santa Cruz Library System in California announced they have selected the open source Koha Zoom integrated library system to replace their aging DRA Web 2 ILS. Working with Koha support vendor LibLime, the SCPL expects their new system to go live in the Fall of 2008.

The SCPL has a central library and nine branches, with an annual circulation of about 2 million items.



Hundreds of other libraries will face the choice of how to replace their aging, dead-ended proprietary ILSs over the next few years, and congrats to the SCPL for choosing an open source solution!

AcqFest to Add Acquisitions and Serials Features to Evergreen

From the open-ils blog comes word of this week's Evergreen AcqFest, during which a group of coders and developers from the U.S. and Canada are meeting in Suwanee, Georgia to work on the acquisitions and serials system (code-named "Woodchip") for the Evergreen open source ILS.

The communal notepad is up as a Google doc and reveals some interesting ideas are floating about. For example, serials control systems have traditionally used calendar-based predictions for serial receiving, which would be adapted as they were used for the inevitable irregularities in subscriptions. Instead, the Woodchip people are looking into a collaborative system in which libraries would share predictive data for titles. Earlier subscribers, which would have worked out many of the quirks in a subscription, would share it with later subscribers, thus easing the workload. A small but smart idea.

Good luck to the Woodchip team. I can't wait to see the outcome!

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King County Will Evaluate Evergreen

Edward Corrado's ecorrado blog brings the story that the giant King County Library System in Washington State (43 branches, 19 million circs in 2006) is hiring Equinox Software to help them evaluate the open source Evergreen ILS.

Evergreen is certainly getting a lot of attention this year even before the serials/acquisition module is out. But the potential advantages of open source in the multi-vendor, multi-system environments in modern libraries are just too obvious to ignore.

Here's the press release: Library Technology Guides: King County Library System selects Equinox Software, Inc. for Evergreen services

ILS Vendors and the Open Source World

I posted this over on the excellent Information Wants To Be Free blog and would like to expand it a bit here.

"Open Source software may not be for everyone, but the mere presence of OSS products in the library market highlights the premium pricing of the proprietary ILSs. If the vendors can’t handle the re-engineering costs now, just wait a few years until every upgrade bid is compared with OSS alternatives– it could really act as a brake on prices. Vendors could find themselves in a real bind."

"In fact, it seems to me that a valid strategy for an ILS vendor would be to pull a Novell. Rather than try to keep Netware competitive, Novell chose to buy a Linux distribution and migrate their customer base to OSS, where they can benefit from the efforts of the whole community and put their money to use in adding value where their customers can see it. They sell support as well as “official” versions of the software. Would your library buy an Open Source ILS if it was supported by Innovative or SirsiDynix?"

An alternative would be to open source a proprietary ILS and try to build a support community around it.

I think the greater software world has shown that these approaches can work, especially when a company does not have the resources to keep a proprietary product competitive. I think all the major ILS vendors are struggling with the realization that they cannot do what their customers are demanding at prices the customers can afford, which might be why so many are selling out to new owners while their customer bases are still intact.

I think moving to Open Source (one way or another) would provide a viable way for a vendor to meet customer demands while staying in business.