Displaying Clustered Search Results“A big point in my NEASIS&T presentation Tuesday was how new technologies like XML and web services allow us to separate the tools that manage and store our data from the tools that display and manipulate it…

…ILS systems themselves are endangered, not able to respond with agility to changing technologies. For libraries to flourish, bibliographic data needs to be flexibly deployable in broader environments lest we will gradually lose relevance.

That was Dick Miller and his colleagues at the Lane Medical Library, Stanford University Medical Center. They weren’t speaking specifically to this issue, but it seems to work. I found it at Panlibus.

(note, I’m conveniently ignoring the role of MARC in all this, since my real concern is about open access to any available metadata, no matter how it’s structured.)

I would suggest that, much like Flickr, the Innopac actually does do what it does well. Like any ILS, the Innopac is really just an inventory management system. And a pretty good inventory management system it is — so good, in fact, that our IT department here ditched their old system in favor of using our Innopac system to check-out laptops and multimedia equipment.

The problem is that we have long mistaken these systems for a search and retrieval tool. That is really only a secondary (at best) feature of any ILS, and so it should come as no surprise to us that the Innopac leaves much, much to be desired in that area. A good web services API, the ability to index and search on any field, and unlimited user liscences — all without having to pay an arm and a leg for it. Those would be the featres of a good search and retrieval tool.

We have inventory management systems.

It used to be true that scarcity = value (or increased prices, anyway). The New York Times endorses that model in the way they put their content behind an auth-wall.

But as we look at commercial successes in the post dot-bomb era, we see more examples of how openness = value.

Google is one example, but I like Flickr the best. It’s a photo sharing site for the “all electronic, no need for prints” crowd. They’ve made a lot of news and gotten a lot of customers by making it easy for people to use the Flickr-hosted content very easily.

A presentation at ETech2005 spoke directly to this. I wasn’t there, but the program description and online conversation made me wish I was.

If Flickr were an ILS, I would be incredibly pleased with it. It does what it does well — the cataloging, classification, storage, and presentation of media objects (photos). I really like their “OPAC” interface, but Flickr has won me over because their API is so rich. I could export all my data and walk away, but I won’t because I’m happy to let them manage it for me. Instead, I can present my Flickr-hosted content elsewhere and re-use it in ways Flickr never imagined. Flickr Colr Pickr is one outstanding example.

Lock-in is a very real vendor strategy. To export data, especially in lossless, standards-based bulk, is a giant red flag for some vendors.

What happens when the data is freed from the box and you can use it where you need it? Burger King. Have it your way.

Of course, the situation is infinately more complex…

Hopefully you under stand my point about logical viewpoints. Our viewpoint is data freedom. Some vendor’s viewpoint is lock-in, thus continued revenue.