21st Century Library Management Systems

One of the things that Library Catalogues do really badly is ranking search results. In fact, I don't know of any out of the box ILS OPACs that even offer relevancy ranking as part of their search. Even the add-on discovery services like Innovative Interfaces Encore and Sirsi Dynix Enterprise that do offer relevancy ranking base it predominantly on how many times and where keywords appear in a record.

It seems to me that collecting data about which items in your collection get used most and the kind of 'he who used that also used this' data that powers sites like Amazon and LibraryThing could greatly improve the discovery environment of your library catalogue.

So I was interested enough in the report from the JISC & SCONUL Library Management Systems Study to post about it on the RISG New Technologies blog.

Beyond 4 Walls: Imagining Reference Services in a 2.0 World

Beyond 4 Walls: Imagining Reference Services in a 2.0 World was presentation given at the Reference @ the Metcalfe Seminar in May 2008. In the presentation I looked at a possible future for reference services and argued the case for starting to plan for that future now.

You can view a version of this presentation below.

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If you can't read the text view the presentation on Slideshare, where you can see it in full-screen.

The links mentioned in the presentation can be found on my del.icio.us bookmarks.

If you view this slideshow or saw me present then please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Why do Libraries Hire Librarians to do Tech Jobs?

Every time I see a job ad for a Systems Librarian where one of the essential criteria is library qualifications I wonder why? The predominant role of these positions is dealing with software and databases. I don't get it?

Anecdotally, it seems that systems librarians are the library workers who have an interest in computers somewhere in their past. Wouldn't libraries be better off with someone who has IT qualifications and experience running their software and databases?

My personal story is a similar one. While I'm not the systems librarian at MPOW I do manage our web presence - something I'm entirely unqualified for. I'm almost completely self-taught. I borrow bits of code and hack them together with my limited skill set. I often have ideas that I can't realise because I'm not a developer/programmer. I'm grateful for the opportunity that many Web 2.0 tools have given me because I can sometimes hack things together simply by filling out a web form and copy/pasting some code. But the possibilities are so much greater...

I explored these ideas a bit more on the RISG New Technologies blog.

Information 2.0

I wrote a post on the RISG New Technologies blog in response to an interesting piece I read titled A Revolution is Coming: Information 2.0 by Mark Lewis, President, EMC Content Management & Archiving Division.

The post addresses the possibilities that are opened up by making data available to the world so that it can be used in new ways and places.

The Hyperlinked Library

My response to a talk from Michael Stephens when he visited Australia in February 2008 titled The Hyperlinked Library posted on the RISG blog.