Some initial thoughts: I am especially pleased that a major consortium with some really big library collections is looking closely at an open source solution. I like what I see so far in some of the searches that I’ve done in the system: the ability to tag, cite, utilize the Google Book Search API, add to favorites, etc. OpenURL linking is built in as well.

Why? Well, although I definitely agree that there is much to like about the new interface, it’s not really that new. During my last stint at what was then Endeavor Information Systems three years ago, I participated in user studies at some existing Voyager customer sites that were based this same interface. The functionality and changes I see in the Voyager 7.0 web interface (a.k.a. WebVoyage) were all designed and finalized, as far as I can tell, three years ago. That’s light years in technology time.

Worse still, the things that are so “exciting” about this new interface (persistent URLs! WHoooHeee! — different “skins”! Oh my! — a truly simple, Google-like basic search! Isn’t that original!) are features that have been available and taken for granted in other systems for years. And they are ones that in some cases have been implemented better than what I have seen so far in Ex Libris’s Voyager offering.

Sorry, but this is just a new flavor of lipstick applied to an old pig. It would take a lot more than this to get me excited about this particular product again.

The use case sounds straightforward, right? Turns out that it is anything but. I was provided with a text file of citations and was asked to come up with appropriate SFX links for each. Of course I could have manually rekeyed the citations one by one into a search form querying our SFX KB, but that would take quite a long time and quite a bit of effort. I tried to think of how this whole process could be automated.

On the advice of Dan Chudnov I downloaded an open source application written in Perl called Biblio-Citation-Parser, which on the face of it seemed to be exactly what I needed. I need a way to automatically parse the whole list of citations into the necessary chunks of metadata, and then automatically generate an OpenURL for each citation. After trying unsuccessfully to get Biblio-Citation-Parser to work (this isn’t a limitation of the software but of my Perl expertise), I sent queries out to other SFX users as well as to the Code4Lib discussion list. There were several responses from members of the Code4Lib discussion list, some of whom mentioned the application that I already knew about. But it turns out that pretty much nobody in that community [at least among those who responded] had ever used it, and also, that nobody in that community had come up with a good solution to this parsing problem themselves.

Since the original citations were stored in Reference Manager, one of the more common citation management software applications, I wrote back to the colleague who first asked me to help with this situation, asking him if he could provide me with the Reference Manager files. He did, and I downloaded a free trial version of the software, imported the references, then exported them in RIS format. Next, I imported the RIS output file into Zotero, and then exported the whole bibliography from Zotero into a readymade HTML bibliography. Because of Zotero’s built-in COinS functionality, the readymade HTML bibliography is automatically populated with OpenURLs. But I wasn’t done yet. I had to go through each citation by hand and test whether we did indeed have the article in full text, and also, to edit the HTML coding to substitute our company’s specific SFX base URL in each link.

In the end, I achieved what the user wanted — a list of bibliographic references with SFX links as the hypertext links. But it was a huge amount of work, and I kept asking myself, surely there is a better, easier way to do this?! Surely, someone, somewhere has already solved this problem of how to readily parse bibliographic citations in a text file and run them through a process to check for which articles are available in full text?

Maybe there is a much simpler solution and if you know of it, please comment on this post to let me know. I’m left thinking that this whole OpenURL stuff still has a ways to go in terms of ease of implementation for situations like I described.

Each of us limited our remarks to 7-8 minutes at Anne’s request in order to maximize the question and answer time with the audience, which numbered around 150 people. That isn’t much time to both describe our backgrounds, why we made the career decisions that we did, and offer pertinent advice as to what it takes to work in an alternative library career.

If you’ve been in the world of libraries for any length of time you will know quite well that there are persistent stereotypes and divisions between various forms of librarianship. For instance, cataloging people and acquisitions people are always supposedly against each other, public services conflicts with technical services, professional librarians and paraprofessionals, and on and on. One of the deepest rooted of these is the continual reference to the “dark side” — meaning, working in the for profit sector. There are many people in this profession who feel that theirs is a higher, better calling if they work in a public or academic library, i.e. a non profit environment. Often there is a lack of respect shown to those who “dare” to look for better wages and sometimes more challenging work in the business world. (Thus the reference to the “dark side.”)

This session, then, was an opportunity to highlight some of the many positives, and negatives, about working for a vendor and in other alternative situations.

One of the things that came up during everyone’s presentations as well as during the Q&A session afterward, was this issue of the “dark side.” I think the highlight of the entire session was when Eve Davis, who works for EBSCO, stated: “We joke about the divide, yet we seem to be perpetuating that very thing by mentioning it so often. Why don’t we stop using terms like ‘the dark side’ even in jest?”

[Updated June 11, 2007: I realized after I had posted this that my narrative just ended without going into any further detail about the session's content, so what follows is what I meant to write originally.]

Here are some of the impressions or things I especially recall from what other presenters had to say:

• Several mentions by those on the panel of having a sense of impatience with the status quo. I thought this was interesting and noteworthy. Christine Stamison, for instance, talked about the process of implementing a new serials check-in form via a committee at The University of Chicago Library, and how that discussion took six months to come to a resolution. If I recall, she made some quip about how difficult it was to “turn the Queen Mary around.” I worked with Christine in the same environment and I can attest to the truthfulness of this observation. Sometimes things change too quickly in the for profit world, but it seems like all of the presenters preferred a faster pace of change and fewer meetings.
• Anne, Christine, Beverley, Mike, and Bob all spoke about the supposed glamour of travel, how it really wasn’t that glamorous after all. Mike illustrated this by mentioning the number of times he warmed his McDonald’s hamburger on top of his hotel room’s TV set. Christine mentioned the fact that this kind of work life can be really lonely, and that you have to have a strong sense of self, that you have to really like who you are. Bob mentioned how much he regrets that travel takes away from time with his family.
• MLS as union card. Beverley made this point, that in her view, the library degree is nothing more than a union card. That doesn’t mean it has no value (Anne also made this point); on the contrary, it establishes important common ground with clients. All of us agreed that we are librarians first and foremost. Anne mentioned, for example, filling out paperwork for her children’s school where she was asked to state her profession, and that she always answers the question with ‘librarian.’
• It was funny to learn that Bob’s first job out of library school was at a taco shack of some sort in Oregon (his home state).
• Support for professional involvement. Everyone on the panel agreed that they receive strong support for professional involvement from their employers. In some cases (and this has been my personal experience), such support is often stronger than what we would have received in an academic or public library. Christine mentioned that she requires everyone who reports to her to become NASIG members and to attend the conference each year.

Some of the points that I tried to make in my portion of the session:

• Be sure to build a record of accomplishment. Then be willing and able to articulate what you’ve done and how it benefits you in various situations. What I was thinking of here, but failed to say explicitly, was the need for project management skills. That is huge. In every job I’ve ever held, the ability to plan and execute projects has been critical.
• It’s not all about money. Yes, the grass is almost always greener on the for profit side of the fence. I pointed out that this was a motivating factor for seeking a job on “the dark side” (and I think this is true of the other panelists as well) but that it was far more important for me to have work that is challenging, fulfilling, and where I learn new things every day.
• It is really important to be a quick study, meaning, be willing to learn and learn quickly. I pointed out that many of the jobs I’ve held were ones for which I had no prior background, but that I was able to succeed in them because of working hard to learn all necessary skills.
• Have specific career goals in mind. Review them regularly, and understand that they may change over time. The example I gave was the difference in my career made by becoming a husband and father. When I was single, I devoted 95% of my time and energy to my career. Now that I have a family, they take precedence.

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¹ PAMS refers to Publication Access Management System, a class of vendor-supplied services that helps libraries manage the e-content to which they provide access.

• Ex Libris – Incident Report for Endeavor Products -
• ELUNA: Ex Libris Users of North America – The user group website for North American customers of Ex Libris.
• Letters to Christians in the U.S.A. – This is a post on a blog maintained by Brian McLaren containing some interesting “letters to Christians in the U.S.A.” Well worth reading, whether you agree with all of the points made or not.
• BIG FAQ! (Tips for Blackberry) – A nice list of links to helpful tips, tricks, and shortcuts for Blackberry users.
• EOR :: Electronic Objects with RSS Feeds – “…provides the global Library community a means by which thay can contribute, maintain and query RSS feeds for electronic objects such as journals, books, newspapers etc.”

• Install WordPress on a USB stick – I am a big fan of using USB flash drives for portable applications like Firefox, Flock, and now WordPress. MPOW locks down PCs to such an extent that this is sometimes the only way someone can use the tools they really want to use.
• Twitter – A sort of "lite" version of blogging…I have to admit that right now I don’t understand it’s usefulness but I hope that will change soon. Found thanks to Steven Cohen of Library Stuff.
• Color Schemer – Online Color Scheme Generator – Enables you to quickly check on a particular hex value (what color it represents), as well as see which colors are complementary.
• Library Z39.50 destinations – A list of libraries whose catalogs support Z39.50 searching, along with information needed to connect to their catalogs via Z39.50
• Exlibris – Pivotal eService – The support portal for Ex Libris customers.

Overall, Meebo is an excellent tool and I highly recommend it.

What else is clear from the merger is that not much aside from Voyager will be retained in terms of products from the Endeavor side of the equation. It appears that for example, Meridian customers will be migrated to Verde; Discovery: Resolver customers will be migrated to SFX; and Discovery: Search customers will be migrated to MetaLib. At least that is my understanding at this stage. Oh, I forgot: There is one other Endeavor product that appears to have staying power: Journals Onsite. I suppose the installed user community for that product as well as for Voyager was just too strong to ignore or alienate.

It is a weird situation. I’m still getting used to saying ‘Ex Libris’ instead of ‘Endeavor.’ I wonder how many customer libraries will actually migrate to new products at a time when many are already overstretched in terms of time and resources devoted to complex information management systems. I wonder about those employees from Endeavor who remain and how they will manage the transition and uncertainty, and the same thing from the Ex Libris side. Time will tell.

Selfishly I am thankful I was able to leave Endeavor when I did, and I am thankful to have a job, period.

The main thing I wanted to note down here is anxiety on my part for friends who are losing their jobs at Endeavor (now merged with Ex Libris). I know that today some of them are feeling the fall of the axe. This is what I thought would happen but hoped it wouldn’t come to pass. I don’t know much more than that — just that some were notified today that they no longer had a job as a result of the merger with Ex Libris.