23 IT in the Library

IT Guy:

Just give me a call or send me an e-mail and I'll call you. You must have missed dozens of announcements in the past few weeks and all last year. Our faceted browser stuff, the full open API, the 400 pages of release notes with Symphony full of 2.0 stuff, the new releases of the EPS and HIP portal software, RFID changes and mobile tools, and loads more. Combined with special, pricing the transition can to new tools can be quite smooth. I assume that you're aware that Horizon continues to have a multi-year development plan that is public.

If your library won't let you get e-mail from SirsiDynix, access to the new innovative customer care site, acces to the SD lists, or to get out to the trade shows at library conferences, then we can arrange for someone to visit and/or deliver web based tours and training, etc.

I'm sorry you missed so much. I can direct you to the innovations, though, so that you're informed about what's happening. Just give me a call. We've actually done a lot lately. It's a shame you're missing it. I hope to correct that.

Stephen

Wow, I wish I could get this kind of speedy response from support, and on a holiday weekend no less. My little old 23 Things blog is only 4 days old. I must have struck a nerve.

I don’t think I’ve missed any announcements. However, I could easily let them pass me by since SirsiDynix has shown a pattern of making promises and not delivering. I guess I’ll have to go back and look things over, but there’s no way I’m reading 442 pages of release notes for a product I don’t even use. I did skim a few pages under the headings Web2 and e-library, but I didn’t see any major 2.0 advancements, just things that SirsiDynix is just catching up on which other companies (non-library) have been doing for years.

Where’s the user tagging, reader contributed reviews, easy integration of Meebo or the like into the catalog template? As for EPS, I don’t need SirsiDynix to give me your idea of a web site in a box. I just need your closed source pac software to let my patrons search with Google like efficiency and let them tag and contribute reviews (at the library’s discretion of course).

Your EPS product is a horrible cluttered mess. Every time I see it, it’s all I can do to uncross my eyes. Don’t library patrons already have enough difficulty searching without all of the extra clutter? Let’s see, try to find the right link or just go to Google? Don’t forget, as a library patron I don’t necessarily understand why an authoritative source is important.

By the way, is EPS included or is it an extra cost? I suspect it’ll cost us. I know Rooms sure will. Just who do you expect to sell your products to anyway? Maybe libraries other than public have money to spare. It seems like every time we want to add something out of your product catalog it costs us about $12,000. It’s so predictable that it’s a running joke around the office.

What about faceted search? So you’re working on it, you were working on Horizon 8.0 from at least 2003 until 2007 and it never showed up. Is anyone actually using your faceted search? I’m sure you’ll work it out since you brought another company on board, but don’t make it sounds like it’s already here.

As for your API, you can keep it. Why should my library pay an additional fee for an API that has far less flexibility than SQL? We have remedied and worked around so many ILS shortcomings using SQL that I can’t imagine being without it. However you’ve decided to standardize on an extremely expensive, closed source vendor for your database backend. Nobody wants vendor lock-in anymore.

As for Horizon and HIP, there’s nothing 2.0 in the latest HIP release. From what I can tell, there are a few long overdue bug fixes. Does Horizon really have a multi-year development plan or is it just a plan to keep on patching a hopelessly left behind ILS until you can cajole those customers into accepting your next product?

If it sounds like I’m jaded, well I am. I bought into 8.0 hook line and sinker way way back. I kept on defending and promoting the product to my organization right up to the end even as you horribly failed one of our sister systems.

Like I said. Give me a call. I know it's much more comfortable to think out loud anonymously. Take a risk and have a conversation.

You might want to read the published usability research on EPS. I think we're the only vendor in our sector to publish our usability studies. Then you'd be able to rise above your personal reactions and base your decisions about portal information density on actual research. One of the issues in the past has been OPAC's designed solely for library-worker personae and not for the general end-user.

Anyway, last chance, decloak and call me.

Stephen

Looks to me like he's already having a conversation with you Stephen! ;-D

Given the current level of corporate confusion emanating from the highest levels of SirsiDynix, I'd personally prefer to see an open public conversation rather than a private closed one.

If I could pull you up on your first reply please... it's not libraries that are blocking Horizon/Dynix customers from talking to our friends & colleagues in the Unicorn mailing lists -- it's SirsiDynix.

I remember losing all the great subject headings that the HCL Sanford Berman team created and were well known for. We had to drop those and go with LC subject headings with going to Horizon from Dynix. Tagging seems to be bringing this ability around full circle. I find it ironic that while our subject headings were unable to be supported and used several years ago it is now the trend to do the same with user generated Tagging.

They all seem behind the curve.