Monthly Archives: November 2006

Giving thanks

Posted on by
Reply

Giving thanks is something I need to do on a regular basis, not just around the Thanksgiving holiday. Let me start, then, with the following list. I am thankful for:

  • My family, especially my wife and my children
  • The knowledge that God loves me in spite of myself
  • A comfortable house to live in
  • A good job
  • Many good friends
  • A good cup of coffee (the stronger, the better)
  • The Thanksgiving holiday
  • A car that works
  • Chlorox wipes (I wonder what we did without them?)
  • iTunes
  • My health
  • Hugs and kisses that my children regularly give me
  • The words, “I love you, Dad”
  • Digital cameras and camcorders
  • Flickr
  • Google products and services (most of them, anyway)
  • Forgiveness of others
  • Many good and happy memories

I know, some of these are pretty silly and others are mundane. But there it is: a start.

Well, well, well

Posted on by
1

I was surprised to see the announcement, published earlier this afternoon, that Endeavor and Ex Libris would merge under the ownership of Francisco Partners, a private equity fund with a focus on technology. In fact, I am still going through all of the ramifications of this news and haven’t quite figured out what it might mean. For a more cogent and unbiased view, be sure to read Andrew Pace’s writeup about the news at his Hectic Pace blog.

I can’t be unbiased about this news. Not only have I worked with and implemented most of Ex Libris’s product suite, I have worked as an employee of Endeavor, most recently from September 2005 through April 2006 (and for about three years in an earlier stint with the company). I have friends in both organizations.

The news caught me off guard. Upon reflection, though, it shouldn’t have. My personal opinion is that no matter what the language of the press release might use, this is not truly a merger of two separate companies. Instead it is a de facto acknowledgement of defeat by Elsevier, Endeavor’s parent company, in the longstanding battle for the high-end, large academic research libraries market. Ex Libris has certainly won the war, with mostly better products, better technology, and better support. My sense is that Elsevier has not received a satisfactory return on its investment in Endeavor; that its strategy, at least as I could see, to utilize Endeavor’s technology to boost its capability to deliver its content, has not been successful.

Of course there is almost a complete overlap of products between the two companies and so the speculation will center on which products will survive. Andrew Pace makes some predictions and I think he is probably correct. We could both be wrong but I agree with Andrew, that Endeavor’s Meridian and Discovery products will soon be history. What is less certain of course is the fate of Endeavor’s Voyager product vs. Ex Libris’s Aleph 500. Each system has its strengths but overall I believe that the Voyager product has a slight edge in terms of ease of implementation and use. We’ll see what unfolds in the coming months. (I have absolutely no “inside” knowledge about any of this. I am just as much in “guess mode” as anyone else.)

More personally, I wonder what will happen to many friends and acquaintences who work for Endeavor. As one would expect, the press release does not go into detail on this aspect of the deal except to say that Ex Libris’s existing Chicago office will be moved into the office space currently used by Endeavor. That office space is right next to O’Hare airport and is ideally situated for easy access for customers. I seriously doubt that everyone’s jobs will be retained as a result of this merger. I especially doubt that the development staff at Endeavor will remain intact. This is the area where I used to work.

It has been clear to me for some time that something big needed to happen at Endeavor if it was to survive. Now I know what that “something” is!

Landing a 747 on grass

Posted on by
Reply

Last weekend I continued my quest to scan more old photos, especially slides, so that more people, especially family and friends, could see them. I was particularly excited to unearth slides from my very first trip to New Zealand, in 1986. Viewing them brought back so many memories. At that point in time, my sister, Becky, was nearing the end of her first pregnancy. My niece, Lucy, would be born a month or so after I flew back to the States. She and her husband, Martin, had been married in May and I was the first one in my family to have the opportunity to visit them.

One of the funny memories I had relates to the flight from Los Angeles to Christchurch on Air New Zealand. (There was direct service then between the two cities; nowadays, you can’t get a direct flight to Christchurch and instead have to go through Auckland on the North Island.) I remember Becky telling me before I left home that I wasn’t to expect much of Christchurch, that the airport was really small and was out in the country. The flight I took was called at that time the Coral Route on Air New Zealand, which meant that I had stopovers in Hawaii and my choice of at least one other South Pacific Island, in this case, Fiji. I had never travelled overseas before and the flight was very long and I felt cramped and restless in the Boeing 747. You can imagine the excitement I felt when at long last, I spotted New Zealand out my window!

The photos below were taken from the plane as we came in for a landing in Christchurch. As we flew lower and lower on approach, I was amazed at the plains stretching out below me (what I later learned was the Canterbury Plains) and the endless number of sheep grazing in the various fields. I began to panic a little bit because we were literally only about 100 feet from the ground, almost at the point of landing, and nowhere could I see a runway or an airport! I remembered what Becky told me about the airport being small and the thought crossed my mind, and I half-believed it to be true, that maybe the runway was made of grass! I thought, wow, the pilots will be landing a 747 on grass!

Of course that turned out not to be the case. The plane landed safely on a regular ol’ runway after all, one that seemed to appear at the very last possible second before we hit the ground. But the memory of that approach to Christchurch will always be in my mind when I think of that trip!

scan0124.jpg

scan0125.jpg

scan0126.jpg

Professionalism, or lack thereof

Posted on by
2

In the past few weeks there were a lot of emails posted to a closed discussion list for customers who use Endeavor’s Voyager system that expressed various degrees of dissatisfaction with the software and the company. The discussion grew out of the need for customers to vote on enhancements for the next major release of the software. The list of possible enhancements was pared down quite a bit and another mitigating factor was that the enhancement process had been defunct, basically, for the past few years.

A lot of excellent points were made by many of Endeavor’s customers. Among them was the desire for more open, interactive communication between the company and its customers. One suggestion for improving this communication was for the company to publish a blog. There had been some movement on Endeavor’s part to do this last year but for whatever reason, nothing happened.

Basically what people see as problematic with the software, and how it is supported, parallels in many ways what I’ve heard customers of other systems vendors complain about. Customers feel that basic functionalities aren’t there, that development of improvements is slow to non-existent, that there is an increasing sense of lack of return on investment. Sometimes I get a little frustrated with those who complain so much about Voyager because many of them seem to think that Voyager is far worse than other systems when in fact, it isn’t. Not that it is “the best” or perfect; far from it. But there is a bit too much of the “grass is greener on the other side of the fence” type of thinking. For instance, there is a perception that one main competitor, Aleph 500 from Ex Libris, is a much better product. The fact is, it has its particular strengths but it also has a large number of flaws, and Aleph customers find a lot to complain about, too.

I am not saying that we as customers should just be satisfied with the software we have. Rather, I am saying that we should realize that it’s not just one vendor or one product in the library marketplace that is problematic. As far as I can tell, having worked closely with three or four of the major systems vendors’ products, none of them is even close to being excellent at what they are supposed to do. I strongly believe that we need to continue to push for improvements but also understand a broader perspective about library software and the forces at work in the marketplace. Sometimes we as customers get so caught up in our own pet peeves and widgety functionality that we think is so important, that we completely lose sight of the broader landscape in terms of shifts in technology, in market demand, in user needs and expectations, etc.

The worst part of it is that many of the discussions we have with or about the vendors we use only serve to expose a pretty ugly side to our profession. For years on the closed discussion list for Voyager there has been a small handful of librarians who take every opportunity they can to make this discussion list a stage where they express how much they think they know and how much they despise the company and/or its software. I don’t have a problem with people expressing frustrations and venting in face-to-face venues. I also think a lot of what they have to complain about is legitimate and noteworthy. What I have a huge problem with is the lack of professionalism these individuals show in how they approach the problem. I believe that the dialog between library vendors and customers should be mutually respectful with a focus on issues rather than individuals, and with a balanced perspective of give-and-take. Sadly, in some quarters, this is completely lacking and as a result, the behavior and attitudes of a few librarian colleagues taints the whole profession.

A quick conference trip to Washington, D.C.

Posted on by
Reply

For the past few days I’ve been on a quick conference trip to a meeting in the Washington, D.C. area. The meeting was organized by NISO and was entitled “From Discovery to Delivery: Solutions to Put Your Content Where the Users Are.”

While there was nothing new or startlingly different about the content of the meeting, for me, at least, I think it was a worthwhile trip overall. The best part of the whole workshop was attending Dan Chudnov’s presentation on “COinS, unAPI, and a Plan for Zero Configuration Service Discovery.” Dan is a great speaker; humorous yet thorough, with an ability to easily explain some pretty technical stuff in a way that most people can understand. I was not surprised to see that he uses a Mac (way to go Mac lovers!) and I liked his use of Keynote for his presentation. The transition theme he used seemed to bother a few people and one person loudly remarked with a sneer, “Looks like a Mac application.” (Get a life, Windows lovers.) What I particularly liked about the approach Dan took with his talk was that he made it Lego-like, that is, piece built upon piece built upon piece, until he reached the (pardon the pun) piece-de-resistance, zero configuration service discovery. His vision for making things completely simple for users, with no configuration necessary for them and no need for them to know about the technical magic that lies behind the user experience, is truly invigorating. The basic focus he had was on using OpenURL and combining it with several other “off-the-shelf” standards to make it dead easy for users to navigate to resources they need. One of the technologies he highlighted was Apple’s excellent Bonjour application for auto-discovery of networked resources such as websites or printers. He also brought up the example of Apple’s iTunes and how it easily allows users on the same network to discover and then play shared music libraries. Overall, this was a great presentation and I am very thankful we have someone of Dan’s caliber to push the technological boundaries in our profession. I wanted to introduce myself to him but didn’t get to do that before the end of the meeting.

Andrew Pace of the Technically Speaking column in American Libraries and author of the Hectic Pace blog, was also in attendance and it was the first time I had seen him in person and heard his by now well-travelled talk about what NCSU has done with its Endeca-powered online catalog. Andrew also is an engaging speaker. I didn’t learn much that I didn’t already know about the work he and others have done but it was interesting to have it presented in person anyway. I wish that I could have spoken with him and others there about the work I am involved in regarding integration of my library’s online catalog with another commercial search engine, work that I think might be interesting to others because it makes new uses of library data that are different than what I have heard is being done anywhere else.

A third highlight of the event was a presentation from someone from the National Academies Press who talked about the challenges and changes they have implemented in providing improved resource discovery for materials they publish. Michael Jon Jensen gave the presentation and he is their Director of Web Communications for the National Academies and Director of Publishing Technologies for National Academies Press. Under his direction this entity has done some really interesting experimentation and development of ways to improve access to the 3,600 books they publish, including development of their own clustering results. One of the things he said that most stood out to me was that National Academies Press provides their books for free in HTML form but they charge for PDF versions. The reason for charging for PDF is that, as he put it, our society still values and treasures the framework and “ethos” of the printed book. Those aren’t his exact words but I think it captures the idea he put forward. He said that a printed book is worth more than the individual pieces, it is bigger and better as a whole collection contained in one package. I thought this to be a very interesting perspective that has important ramifications for how we present and deliver information in an increasingly e-only world.

Jane Burke, former CEO at Endeavor and someone with whom I have always gotten along, was also there as a presenter and it was nice to chat with her for a while and to hear how she is doing in her job leading Serials Solutions.

Finally what made the trip special was the chance to catch up with old friends, Janet Lee-Smeltzer and Tom Wilson. Janet works at UMBC and Tom worked until recently at University of Maryland, College Park. Each night they picked me up from my hotel and we had dinner together and talked far into the evening about librarianship, Web/Library 2.0, library politics, and many other topics.