Stopped by the Train – Page 10 – . . . the story of my life

WiLSWorld #3

live blogging at WilsWorld in Madison
afternoon Plenary Session

Georgia PINES: Adventures in Statewide ILS Development
Dr. Lemar Veatch, Georgia State Library

A little friendly banter – how ’bout those Dogs/Badgers

A little color – Lemar has a great Hawaiian shirt. Says he ordered it for this occasion from a shop in Honolulu

There are 50 state libraries, and 50 ways of doing things

PINES – Public Information Network for Electronic Services
46 public library systems
254 facilities and BKMs
8.8 million items
1.7 million actives cardholders from all 159 Georgia counties
Single almost state-wide library card

Started out as a Y2K project. Shook a lot of money loose in the public sector. Georgia appropriated a whole bunch of $$$ to fix Y2K problems. Lots of small libraries had no or very inadequate Winnebago systems that were not Y2K compliant.
David Singleton wrote a white paper, which is what became PINES

Georgia environment:
159 counties
59 systems
375 facilities
25% state money. 75% e-rate money. High speed lines into every library (many multiple)
45th concerning local funding. 5th concerning state funding.
state pays for librarians
tremendous dependency on state funding
in rural areas even higher ratio
where there is more state money, comes more power (executed “benignly”)
have power to make people come together to do the right things for the right reasons

How is PINES unique?
free to any resident of Georgia
Card good at any PINES facility, materials returned to any PINES library
Completely transparent
***new books protected from intra-PINES loans for 6 months
FY07 480,000 intra-PINES loans, in FY00 6000 loans
Statewide courier service began in October 2004. service to all headquarters libraries in PINES
PINES libraries agree to a common set of policies and procedures – a consistent patron experience
Common fine structures
Fines and fees paid at any PINES library
Overdue notices processed centrally for all member libraries

Reality of buying a vendor ILS dictated agreement on policies. Locked librarians in a room until they came up with an acceptable agreement.

many small libraries hang on to older items, they become the long tail of older items that get requested

Governance
9 representatives from member library systems compose Executive Committee
Elected by member systems annually – staggered terms
Meet quarterly or as needed
Module-specific subcommittees make policy recommendations
Executive Committee sets policies (not GPLS)

Benefits for libraries
One easy interface
Local identity
Increased access
Centrally administered
Significant ILS costs paid by state
Regional training, convenient to member libraries and staffs
Centralized helpdesk and support for software and common policies
Centralized overdue notices – mail and email

Cost-Benefit
Estimate to install stand-alone ILS in all PINES libraries: $15M
Estimate annual maintenance: $5M

PINES annual operations: $1.6M
$/per registered customer
1/10 of cost of purchasing individual automation systems
These figures resonate with legislators

Library patrons don’t care about legislative jurisdictions or geographic boundaries

Conduct annual satisfaction survey. 3900 responses. very good responses

Crossroads for PINES
Initial 5-year software contract for PINES ended in June 2005
2003-2004: comprehensive survey of the library automation marketplace
Is the software drive the policy/procedure, or vice versa?
Drumbeat for “open-source” …foolish, crazy, suicidal?

New librarian said he’d like to develop an ILS (Brad)
Told Brad +2 to take a year to see where he was
Conducted focus groups

What do PINES libraries need?
Enterpres-class relational database
Scalable and standards compliant
Ease of use
Flexible & reliable
Data security
Stats and reports to correspond to annual reporting requirements

Evergreen ILS developed in a fully Open Source environment
Software development began in June 2004
All PINES libraries migrated to Evergreen software on 9-5-06
Evergreen debuted with Online Catalog, Circulation, Cataloging, and Reports
Transactions, customer records, and online catalog records were migrated from the former system (on Labor Day weekend)

First iteration of Evergreen intended to get out from under vendor software.
Get basic functionality with room to grow

Evergreen features:
Search capabilities similar to popular commercial websites
Live circulation data in the OPAC
Google-like spell-checking and search suggestions
Added content, book covers
Scalability for growth
Enhanced security features
Customer empowerment
Works with JAWS
Virtual books bags
RSS
Local flexibility for authorizations down to desktop
Surveys
Virtual containers for batch changes
Simplified merging of bibliographic records
OPAC view in staff client
Use of tabs
Search any field in patron record
Randomized olds which work in a tiered structure

Core technologies
Database: PostgreSQL
C++ and Perl
Abache mod-perl
Linux
Jabber
XUL

Evergreen Design
Cost-effective
Reliable
Flexible

Where do we go from here:
Develop children’s catalog
Complete Spanish translation for OPAC
French/Canadian version completed
More self-service options, including online bill pay for customers
Enhanced links with GALILEO – Georgia’s state-wide database portal
5 systems waiting
Work with partners on protocols to share information with other automation systems (Open NCIP).
Partnership with U Rochester – extensible catalob project
Develop the A/S – Partner with U Windsor, BC Libraries, and Equinox
Enhance social networking
Partnerships with libraries worldwide
Cooperative systems with universities

development team says they stand on the shoulders of lots and lots of other developers
developed in open environment

http://www.open-ils.org/ software development

http://www.gapines.org/ online catalog

demoed catalog
Shelf browser – neat!

Only circulating/reserving books, not AV, Board policy

Bookbags, have multiple bags. Share the bag, with RSS

You’d never buy a car with the hood welded shut. Georgia wants to get in there and tinker.

Staff of 8-9 for PINES

WiLSWorld #2

live blogging, session 2 –

R & D for Libraries
Boguszewski & Meyer, Library Technology Group
UW-Madison Libraries

Management is getting from here to there
Challenge is figuring out where here is and where there is

Google admits they haven’t got it all figured out. Their specialized projects are all “Beta”

Library paradigm change – Embrace the beta
Beta implies unfinished. A great time to get feedback to users

Why releasean unfinished product? — we don’t know yet what we don’t know.
(but neither do users)

Netflix (exaample) site update schedule: 2 weeks
all services through website
they know the benefits of failing fast
teams that fail fast improve as fast, if not faster. Reason: teams trying to get it right the first time fail as often as everyone else.
90% of the ideas they try fail

R&D can be dangerous, must have clear goals. solve only known problems and problems that are important.

What is the problem?
Do the tools exist?
Does the staff exist?

Infrastructure
Vertualization
Security
=Ability to move fast

Vertualization – they use VM ware
Leverages the hardware they’re buying
Virtual servers can be cloned quickly. Take the time up front to set up server, patch, base software, test results for consistency. Ability to have exact replicas of an environment.

Can test things like patches before deploying in live environment
Take a snapshot of the environment before development. can quickly revert to a moment in time if development goes bad.

Help desk system -selection of tool
found many others were using open source
pick your flavor (operating system)
pick your database
Installed 4 products of help desk systems

Advantages of open source
Constantly changing, fixing bugs
Ability to modify source code
Community enhancements and plug ins
Simple, easily changeable interface

Disadvantages of open source
Constantly changing, fixing bus
No direct customer support (get answers from others on their timeframe)
Development is not free

Richard Stallman: “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price . . . .

Chose open source system for help desk. Had plug in to integrate inventory into ticketing system.
Out of the box worked well
Chose Request Tracker
*Email generated tickets
*Web forms
*Inventory information

Make the catalog data work harder
Persistent notion, that libraries build collections (not just collect things)
Why does OPAC suck? We’re data rich, but functionality poor.
trying to fix existing system like putting lipstick on a pig (ouch)

Greatest strengths
Patrons come to library because we have good
We collect smartly
Bibliographers and collection managers build collections

“There is no online equivalent to browsing the stacks” (history professor)
Can browse by call number
Wrong assumption – that people know call numbers

Tennant said we’ve spent a lot of time making people expert searchers
We should be spending more time making computers do what searchers want

Focus – how does one bib record connect to others in the collection?

At the time find one good hit, then provide a way to go to a call number search in order to simulate call number browse of shelf.

Mock up shows it can be done. Given to vendors as a model.

WiLSWorld Conference Notes

2 PointOh My Library Software and Services in a New Era
Andrew Pace, North Carolina State University

Live blogging at WilSWorld Conference at the Pyle Center in Madison
Keynote speaker Andrew Pace
oops – he missed the memo – no Hawaiian shirt (me either)

Library 2.[Gr]0[an]

Doesn’t believe in generational divisions
Do good better
Give the people what they want
Be where the user is
Make it more efficient
Rinse and repeat

The worst level of Internet service that users will accept is the best of service that they’ve ever seen

Watch for the geezer alert (we’ve been doing it since . . . . )

2.0 affects the whole library
Not just technology
Collections 2.0
Technical Services
Access Services
Library Education

Pace very crow-oriented: distracted by shiny and shinier objects

Maurice Line: Librarianship as it is practiced: a failure of intellect, imagination and initiative.

It’s time to get on the bus or get off at the next stop

Collections & Technical Services 2.0
Would take over 1300 LC to create surrogate records at the same rate that Google is digitizing books.

LC still rocks – cited World Digital Library

Rumors of MARC’s death exaggerated
Cult of MARC will keep us from moving ahead

Standards are like toothbrushes – everybody says they’re necessary, but no one wants to use anyone else’s

Pursuit of the perfect record is what’s hurting us

Catalog should recognize clusters, show lineage, . . . .

Access Services 2.0

Self check out
Self check in
Compact storage and automatic retrieval (has real financial benefits)

Public Service/Spaces 2.0

NC State just opened learning commons
Wireless, white boards all over, scanners, carrels leave room for collaboration, group study with projection
Service desk
Plasma screen w informative information
Wii and XBox for a break
Loan devices – cameras, MP3s, laptops, GIS
Webpage has a forum
Webcam

Keep in context – penmanship was once required in library school

Administration 2.0
The staff will change, or the staff will change (anonymous)

Library Interfaces 2.0
The bar is so low you cannot fail (about making a better online catalog)
Catalog been around 20+ years (Google and Amazon about 10+)
Catalog was the first database that the public encountered
Emphasis was how to move people comfortably from the card catalog
Catalog was a back office operation – an advanced inventory management system
Shameful that we’ve let it go on for so long

Skills for librarians and technology pros are different

Vendor 2.0 vs Web 2.0
Down to about 20 vendors (squandered our money doing exactly what we asked them to)
Era of ILS is dead
Vendors are pretty uninterested
2.0 in business world means equity buyouts, mergers and acquisitions, vertical integration, cost-cutting, and (too often) unhappy customers)
No one woke up and said “libraries, that’s where the money is”
More accurately recognized ILS industry as ripe for consolidation

You can please some of the peole some of the time, and others never at all (AP’s mother)

Challenge for us is not teaching the patron to use our systems, but rather making our systems do what the patrons are familiar with

WorldCat Local – not sure what level of customization they will allow
Long queue for reclamation

Reference many companies under same “umbrella”

Facets are the icing, not the cake

Managing the infrastructure

My favorite movie is Field of Dreams, in which Ray Kinsella/Kevin Kostner builds a baseball field that enables his vision to become reality. The baseball field provides the infrastructure to set the scene for the players to come out of the cornfield to make the game. Shoeless Joe Jackson/Ray Liotta said “If you build it, he will come.” And when Ray built it, he and others did come.

That’s what good management does; it enables, creates, and maintains infrastructure and environment. It’s the playing field where good customer service can happen. Infrastructure is everything from facilities to personnel to technology and other tools. In libraries and library service agencies (like ours), the people who provide the services are our most valuable asset.

Working for the military, I learned that there are 2 critical tasks in management – take care of your people and make the boss look good. Get those 2 things down, and your career is secure. Screw it up and look for another job. It’s really a pretty basic concept. Take care of the people and make their environment one in which they can take care of the business. Take care of the boss, and the boss’ll take care of you – and everybody’s got a boss, whether it’s the CEO or the taxpayers.

Take a look at a business (whether a library or a coffeeshop) where you get good service. I’m pretty sure the employees are happy and fulfilled. Their surroundings are clean and up to date, their tools work, expectations are clear, and they have a good sense of team spirit. That’s what the good manager does – makes sure all those environmental and human factors are in place.

End of a long week

Joy to the World — and boy, did it feel good. It’s been a grueling week — long meetings, lots of windshield time, personnel challenges, reports that didn’t get done. It was a great way to put it all to rest. The company was good (the cousins), the music was loud (3 Dog Night), and it all took me back to a time when I didn’t have to be a grown-up, for the moment anyway.

And why is this post appropriate to my librarian blog? Well, it was a replay of ALA 2001 in San Francisco, where I last saw 3 Dog Night when they played for the Scholarship Bash.

National Ice Cream Day – in 2 days

I’m posting this ahead of time, so that we can get ready. Sunday, July 15th is National Ice Cream Day – designated in 1984 as an annual event to be the third Sunday of July by President Ronald Reagan. (no theme intended, even though my previous post also referenced President Reagan).

Wouldn’t it be fun to have an ice cream social as a library event? Or at the very least, for virtual patrons, provide reference links to ice-cream-recipes.com. All those great ice cream recipes – just waiting to be made. Maybe I should head on over to my local big-box store (many to choose from) and pick up an ice cream maker this afternoon. Or then again, maybe I’ll just spend Sunday touring ice cream shops.

Anyway, have a happy Ice Cream Day!

4th of July Reflections

Forgive me if I’m a little sentimental today. I always get this way on the 4th of July, as I have ever since my family lived in Berlin. It was in the years just before the Berlin Wall came down – not “fell” as is often said, but was torn down with picks and hammers and bare hands after border crossings were opened on November 9th, 1989.

During the time we were there, there were frequent hints that the way things were would not last forever. My husband and son were at the Brandenburg Gate when President Ronald Reagan said:
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I’ve always wished that I would have been at the Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987; but as a recent military award recipient, I was one of the lucky few to receive a ticket to the reception for President Reagan at a hangar at Tempelhof Airport, the Air Force base during the Cold War years. So, my family constantly reminds me that the speech they heard made history. The only thing I remember about the Tempelhof reception was a quip that President Reagan made when one of thousands of dropped balloons popped “you missed me that time.” (he had earlier in his term survived an assassination attempt.)

It was in the shadow of the Wall that we lived a pretty normal life, with frequent reminders that we were living the life of the privileged free, while a stone’s throw away, East Germans did not have the same privileges. I was a Cub Scout leader, and took the kids on hikes that followed the walking path at the foot of the Wall around the American sector. Once during a winter walk, a snowball hit the back of my legs, and as I turned around to reprimand my charges, I realized that the kids had entered into a snowball fight with the East German border guards from the watch towers above us. They were giving as good as they got, so we all smiled and waived as I hurried the Cubs on our way. It sure left me with a lump in my throat.

Every 4th of July, the Americans threw a huge celebration, and invited the other Occupation Forces (the Russians, the French, and the Brits) as well as all our German neighbors. We had food, and the Army Band playing all the best patriotic music, and fireworks that shone high above the Wall long into the night. What a rush!

I wrote my mother during that time, “I’m learning two things during this time of my life, how great America is sometimes not, but how great it is to be American.” She saved all my letters, and returned them to me as a chronicle of our family’s life in Berlin. I often resurrect that filter to take a step back and look at news items, as they would appear from afar. I think it enables me to be productively objective. Also, on a daily basis I marvel in the debates and challenges that occur in running America’s public libraries that provide unfettered access to the information that equips citizens and communities to reach their full potential.

Happy July 4th!

Free Beer or Kittens?

Freeware isn’t free. Nor is open source software. Yet, I often use those terms in describing social software solutions to libraries as cost-effective communication, marketing, or customer service tools for their libraries. I (as well as others) am intrigued by the implementation of open source library automation software by some pioneering library system, most notably the Georgia PINES (Public Information Network for Electronic Services) library system, which migrated in September 2006 from a commercial ILS system to an in-house developed, open-source platform, named “Evergreen.”

Wow, it’s so cool to be able to access or download software like Blogger or pbwiki (“make a free wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich”) and in a short time display a product that simulates the online presence of big library technology gurus. Trouble is, we’re seldom cognizant of the true cost in development and customization time involved in getting the product on the virtual street.

Open source software refers to an application that is derived from a freely accessed basic code and developed through a collaborative effort by multiple users in an environment dispersed both through time and space. Note: no record is kept of the value of the time of all those IT gurus (not insignificant).

Karen Schneider draws a really relevant metaphor in her posting on ALA TechSource, IT and Sympathy.

. . . remember nothing is “free,” even if it didn’t come with a price tag. Second Life isn’t “free.” Instant messaging isn’t “free.” WordPress isn’t “free.” (In fact, that sucking sound you hear may be your RSS feeds dragging down that server hosting your blogs.) Or, more correctly, all of these technologies are “free” as in “free kittens,” not free as in “free beer.” They come with maintenance and deployment issues, from opening ports on a secure network, to how much bandwidth they will use, to how much time IT personnel need to devote to deploying and maintaining the “free” software.

Library service for military families

Minnesota National Guard troops will be home this summer, according to almost every news source in Minnesota. The Minnesota division has served almost 2 years, longer than any other state’s Guard division. As a former military librarian as well as a military spouse and mom (retired USAF), I feel the excitement with every one of those families.

While my family went through numerous deployments, we always lived on a military installation where the infrastructure provided lots of support and the families around us shared the same experiences as we did. Guard troops will return directly to Hometown Minnesota after a short demobilization period at Fort McCoy.

All troops don’t live near their Guard units and most hometown communities don’t have a very experienced long-term support structure to help military families. Most military families will attest to the fact that coming home is only the beginning of stressful family times, as they re-acclimate to life back together, sometimes more different than the same as it was before deployment.

Community libraries are well placed to function as an information source to military families to help them through the next period, reintegration. I encourage library staff members to familiarize themselves with the information on these two resources. You never know when you’re working the desk and can offer something of value to military families.

Yellow Ribbon Resource – The Minnesota Department of Education has partnered with Governor Pawlenty’s Yellow Ribbon Task Force to provide resources for military families and educators.
Family Programs: Association of the United States Army – Resources include a bibliography of books on military life, including children’s books.

Library Speakers’ Bureau – just like Rochesterfest

Here’s a great idea from Marylaine Block’s weekly e-zine (#299, 22 June 2007). In her newsletter article today, Knowledge Pushers, Marylaine says that libraries are more than books. She cites the value of the knowledge of librarians. She says:

We know how to get grants, how to track our ancestors, how to digitize precious historical and family photos, and how to entice children to read. We know how to find trustworthy factual information on political candidates and important public issues. We’ve done the research and can tell anxious parents about the capabilities and limitations of various internet filters; we can also suggest other ways to keep kids safe as they explore the net.

She suggests that the reason the public doesn’t know is that we don’t tell them, that libraries wait for people to come to us, when we could go out to the community. Marylaine says that as the director goes out (I hope that’s so, but I fear too many times it’s not), so could other library staff.

All this reminded me of Rochesterfest — where I’ve found wonderful food the last couple of days (why cook?). At Rochesterfest, there is a row of food stands, run by our great local restaurants. People who go to the festival find great food from vendors whose restaurants they may never have thought to try.

So, just like the restaurateur, who comes to meet new customers where they are, the library will bring valuable information to people where they are through the library speakers’ bureau.

While I don’t work in a library that provides direct service to end users, I do get the chance to speak to groups (as do most of the librarians I work with) – and really get charged up when I invited to do so. I’ve spoken to church libraries, Rotary, groups of teachers and librarians, led a book discussion for a tea, and am looking forward to this fall when among other meetings I’ll be doing a presentation for the Friends of the Mabel Public Library.