Wednesday, August 1. 2007
Access 2007 draft program is online!
I had been getting anxious about the lack of news on the Access 2007 conference front, but just saw in my trusty RSS feed that the draft program schedule is now available. I'm already looking forward to Jessamyn West's opening keynote and Roy Tennant's closing keynote. They always bring interesting perspectives to the table.
I'm keenly anticipating (for obvious reasons) in the Open ILS, Web 2.0 and multitype provincial library initiatives in BC session -- the second implementation of a given application is always an interesting exercise, and it will be good to finally see the BiblioCommons social interface on a live system and find out how hard it was to write a BiblioCommons driver for Evergreen. I've had a chance to talk with Brandon Uhlman about some of the choices they've made for the hardware infrastructure and it should provide an interesting contrast to the Georgia PINES mega-cluster 
The ILS Options for Academic Libraries session will also be interesting, although I'm a little worried about how well Evergreen will be represented. I know that Don Hamilton, from Wilfred Laurier University (WLU), has been working with Evergreen to a certain extent -- they have their e-book holdings loaded at Tamarak, although at the moment it doesn't seem to be responding. WLU is closely associated with the University of Waterloo and they collaborate on information technology, so I guess Allan Bell from WLU will be representing Evergreen on the panel. My worries are probably not warranted. And I find it both interesting and disappointing that Koha isn't mentioned at all as an option for an academic library. I suppose there are no Canadian academic institutions that have given Koha much serious consideration at this point; perhaps that will change once a Koha 3.0 release candidate becomes available and Koha will be better able to handle the volumes of items that academic libraries hold.
<rant>I don't understand why The Talis Platform gets a session. From the session description, it's purely a product presentation. Great, so the Talis Platform offers Web service APIs, and some people are building applications on that apparently. Yes, yes, you can share your data. What does it cost to store your data into the Talis Platform, and what other free or pay or income-generating features are Talis going to build on the back of all of that data they're hoping to attract, and why can't I simply get this information from the Web site, a product brochure, or a chat with a friendly Talis salesperson at a booth rather than taking up another valuable conference session?</rant>
Ah well. For one of the best library conferences, being held on Vancouver Island, I can deal with one off-key note. I already have my hotel room booked and I'll be keeping an eye on updates to the program schedule -- oh yeah, and registration is supposed to open up at the end of the week. Hope to see you there!
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By day I'm the Systems Librarian for Laurentian University. You can reach me by email at dan@coffeecode.net.
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I am also looking forward to being able to report progress and real benefits that have taken place in the Talis Platform in my own session. I was a little disappointed at your reaction to the inclusion of the session in the programme.
Maybe this is based on a misunderstanding, as you seem to believe that the Platform is an application I am hoping to try and sell to you. The Platform is no more an application than is Solr, Amazon's S3 Storage Service, or the Metaweb platform that Freebase is built upon.
As to applications, we fully expect ourselves, other library vendors, non-commercial organisations, and individuals such as your self to build them on top of the Platform Services and you are quite right you would expect to find out about any of those applications which their creators choose to commercialise from friendly salespersons in various booths.
I have three main objectives for my presentation. Firstly to relate some of the issues we are addressing whilst building the Platform which are very similar to those being addressed by many in the library development community, but on a larger scale; secondly to demonstrate the real benefits of building applications on top of such a Platform as against traditional approaches; and finally to engage with the community who can benefit from the Platform to help us get it right in a way that they can use it, control it, and depend on it.
You raise the 'how much is it' question. This obviously raises the 'what do you want to do with it' question in my mind. What I can say is that there will be some uses of the Talis Platform that will be free, and not just the free to experiment we have always made clear. (We are happy to discuss offering free unlimited use stores for non-profits and open source projects) There again at the other extreme you wouldn't expect to benefit from a Software-as-service Platform underpining say a National Union catalogue with the obvious required stringent SLA terms without paying a realistic price for it. Apart from taking input on, and validating functionality, it is this sort of thing that we want to engage with the community about.
As I say, I'm really looking forward to Access this year, we should meet up and discuss things further.
You do a better job of summarizing the content of your planned session in your reply than in the Access 2007 summary, which simply says (after referring to previous Talis presentations): "See how it is now being used by others, and by Talis, to deliver real applications. Find out how you can try it for yourself."
The first sentence of the Access 2007 summary sounds very much like *testimonials*, the preferred marketing approach for products that are prevented by law from making claims on any scientific basis. Not an auspicious start.
The second sentence of the Access 2007 summary is a pretty typical closing line for a sales pitch.
So I'm sorry, but the Access 2007 summary of your session sounds like marketing, marketing, marketing to me. Emphasis on to me.
If you want to talk about the semantic web, and about infrastructure and technologies that can enable the semantic web to succeed, and avenues that have been tried but led to failure... that would be an interesting talk. Tying a talk to a specific service (can I call the Talis Platform that, since you object strenuously to "application") from a specific company, however, immediately makes me start planning what nice activity I can enjoy in Victoria during that part of the day.
I'm not pretending to represent the entire library world, or even a significant portion of the Access audience. I'm telling you what I hear when I read session summaries like you have posted for Access 2007. Take it as free marketing feedback, without even needing to pony up for sandwiches and soft drinks for a focus group.