Third Blog Post

In Marcia Deddins' article "Overview of Integrated Library Systems," the author opens with discussing the progress that Integrated Library Systems have made in the past years and how well they fit with the library's system goals of providing content to users easily. Deddins discusses the importance of the ILS and how it truly influences and shapes the library itself--without the ILS and the work that goes into creating it, libraries would not be as efficient or well-used as they are. Deddins goes on to look at three different ILS vendors (making the caveat beforehand that vendors tend to put a fine gloss on their product and make you hear only the great things): Endeavor, Innovative Interfaces, and SIRSI. It seems as though the purpose of putting these different vendors descriptions of their own products up against each other is to see the similarities and differences between them, and also to show what they are trying to do to help the library. What is similar about all of these vendors is their stress on integration of different library materials and metadata. All of them claim that their product is the perfect integrated system for data management and for allowing for a better digital library environment. But each of these vendors has a different stress overall--for Endeavor, they focus on the notion of creating a stronger digital library in which the searching process is simpler, as is individualization and access. For Innovative Interfaces, they focus more on the integration of metadata, and the more technology-based advances that they are making. Finally, SIRSI has a completely different pitch in that they bring it all to the user and the people rather than the technology, making it seem as though they are more interested in helping the user than in innovation for itself. At the end of the article, Deddins concludes that the innovations that are occuring in ILS today are great opportunities for librarians and IT professionals to collaborate and innovate so that the ILS will become stronger and more user-friendly, accomplishing the goals that are set for the library.

This leads into the second article, "Re-Integrating the 'Integrated' Library System" by Marshall Breeding. Breeding is dismayed at the route that the ILS has taken in recent years, seemingly upstaged by Google and "a la carte" automation utilities that defeat the purpose of an ILS. Breeding's biggest issue seems to be that with all of these a la carte tools that are being introduced to libraries and are bought up and used more and more as the need for integration becomes stronger and stronger, libraries are moving farther away from being able to have a more integrated system and save the ILS from becoming defunct. He sees the problem as being the fact that all of these different software applications are not compatible or cohesive, thus not allowing for a more seamless system (which although he admits is impossible, he can see the possibility for better cohesiveness) and turning users away from the ILS which seems complicated and bulky compared to Google's sleekness. Breeding sees two problems standing in the way of a more integrated ILS: Requests for Proposals and the industry itself. Vendors don't want to steer away from the long checklists of things librarians expect out of their systems, even when some of the things asked for hinder best functionality. When it comes to the marketplace, the ILS is expensive and if the add-ons were put into the ILS package as a whole, it would only get more expensive. With limited and shrinking budgets, having an a la carte system for purchases makes it easier for libraries to afford what they need and gives the vendor better profits. At the end of his article, Breeding seems to be optimistic that the ILS will find a way to better integrate with the add-ons libraries require, but does warn that if they don't, more and more users will turn away from using the library as a resource and go straight to Google and Amazon.

The combination of these two articles makes for an interesting discussion: where Deddins seems to have a pretty positive outlook on ILS, Breeding does not, and thinks that there needs to be a strong upheaval of the traditional ILS in order to keep up with web technology. What both do seem to realize is the need and opportunity for collaboration between the IT profession and librarians in order to get users to continue using the ILS that libraries provide. It seems as though most of the articles we read about library technology are constantly bringing up the fact that Google and Amazon have a leg-up over libraries because of their sleekness, and we need to revamp our own systems to become more user friendly, inviting more people to use them. Whether this is through some tweaking on the part of the vendors or librarians, or if we need a complete overhaul of the ILS is a question that is under serious debate. A discussion question that arises out of these two articles might be: to what extent do libraries need to mirror Google and Amazon? Will becoming more like them take away from the library's goal and the basic structure of the ILS as we've known it? Is there something that can be done when it comes to the vendors (e.g. rising costs, asking for different features, etc.)?

Bibliography
Deddins, Marcia. "Overview of Integrated Library Systems." EDUCAUSE Evolving Technologies Committee. 2002. http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/DEC0201.pdf.

Breeding, Marshall. "Re-Integrating the Integrated Library System." Computers in Libraries 25.1 (2002):28-30.