Tag Archives: Andrew Pace

Right on target

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Call me cranky. Say I am just not willing to write anything positive about this organization. Whatever. I inwardly cheered when I read Tim Spalding’s (LibraryThing) critique of OCLC’s latest report. It is right on target. By way of contrast, Andrew Pace gushes about how “this is our report; we paid for it” and how we should be proud of OCLC for producing it and making it freely available. Gag. This is NOT our (the entire world of libraries) report! And why should we (again, the implication is that ‘we’ encompasses all librarians) be thrilled with a glossy report that cost how much? to produce, and a weird new logo that cost how much? for someone to dream up? Ugh. All I can see are dollar signs when most libraries have relatively little dollars to spend.

Tim makes a more cogent point that the report makes no mention of LibraryThing or any of its competitors, yet purports to be a report that discusses social networks. That is pretty strange, I agree.

Why am I being so negative? Well, for one thing, I think we (yes, I am implying all librarians) are way too ready to swallow any old codswallop presented to us in a nice package. Let’s be a lot more discerning and critical for a change. Also, and more precisely, I strongly object to the idea that keeps getting pushed by prominent techie leaders that OCLC represents us (implying, all libraries). It represents many, but not all.

Well, well, well

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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!

A quick conference trip to Washington, D.C.

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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.