Once again, we at CARE Affiliates are joining with Index Data to offer a series of educational sessions in our booth at ALA. The Index Data/CARE booth will be #466 in the Anaheim Convention Center.

It is important to understand that these seminars are truly intended to be educational in nature, not product sales sessions.  They’re short, about 30-40 minutes and cover a variety of topics at various times.  They will include:

Sharing Stuff — How can we make a living if we give it all away? Mike Taylor, Software Guy, Index Data.   Saturday, June 28th at 11:30am and Sunday, June 29th at 10:30am

Building Solutions the Index Data way. Sebastian Hammer, President, Index Data.  Saturday, June 28th at 2:00pm and Monday, June 30th at 11:30am

“Blowing the doors off metasearch”; Opening up a world of resources to your users. This session will cover OpenTranslators, MasterKey and other technologies you can use.  Carl Grant, President, CARE Affiliates.  Saturday, June 28th at 4:00pm and Monday, June 30th at 9:30am.

Planning for a Repository. This session is designed to introduce concepts to be considered in planning for the implementation of a repository.   Carl Grant, President, CARE Affiliates.  Sunday, June 29th at 12:30pm and Monday, June 30th at 1:30pm

The Universal Search Solution: A Case Study in the Index Data Approach. Come learn how the next generation of metasearch is being built.  Sebastian Hammer, President, Index Data.  Sunday, June 29th at 2:30pm.

If you want to attend a session, please note that seating is limited (8-10 seats). Sending an RSVP to “info (at) care-affiliates.com” will help them ensure adequate seating is provided. We also advise you to stop by our I booth (#466) when you first get to the exhibit floor to see if any last minute changes have occurred in the schedule due to unforeseen circumstances.

We look forward to seeing you there.

“Show me someone who doesn’t dream about the future and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t know where they are going.”

That’s a pretty well known saying about the future and one that is appropriate to a recently announced contest on predicting the future of metasearch, sponsored by the Federated Search Blog.

While most people live in the “today” and think of small enhancements that would make their life and their user’s, use and work-flows easier with today’s products, there are those who dream of the future and what might be possible. This contest is for them (and there’s even some money to be won). It’s a chance to write up their dreams and share them with a much larger audience. The entries will also be judged by a panel of people working in the metasearch /federated search field, including yours truly.

The possibilities are wide open, the vision limited only by imagination. Clearly the writers will need to think about things like:

… Social networks and how to harness that resource

… Cloud and grid computing

… Visualization and vocalization

… Content granularity and recomposition in new forms

… Roles of librarians in federated/metasearching?

… Who will be providing the products/services?

… Where will the metasearch software live?

… Who will the providers be?

The list goes on. But at the end, hopefully we’ll begin to have a better defined view of the future.

As my son grew, up we lived in the middle of the country, and he developed a fondness for the west coast and a desire to live there. I frequently said to him, “you can head out the door and head west and you’ll likely eventually get there. However, if you first get a map and plot your course, you’ll get there sooner and with a lot more accuracy.” This is a chance to help put together that map and plot that course. Let us hear from you. Details are here.

I won’t claim there is anything new in this white-paper by Ingres, but if you’d like to hear what you’ve heard from the small open source vendors in the library market being said by a major corporation with thousands of customers, then you might find this paper provides some level of assurance. (It could also come in handy if you’re trying to convince a Board Member about open source and they give you a blank stare when you say “Index Data“, “Relais“, “CARE“, “LibLime“ or “Equinox“ but at least acknowledge they’ve heard of a company called “Ingres“. Many of the reasons Ingres cites as to why open source is a viable option for all size institutions (all the way up to enterprise level) bears striking similarity to what we’ve said in previous posts. It’s short, to the point and carries some authority. You might find it useful.

One thing you can count on in reading blogs is different perspective. So, today I read two interesting posts, both talking about open source. The first, a blog by Tom Chamberlain, discussed some reasons why open source continues to have a growing presence in the software market. I particularly found myself agreeing when Chamberlain stated:

“The Software Industry is polluted with examples of companies doing more work than they need to by spending money on building things that already exist.”

There are those of us in library automation that have been saying this for quite awhile. We’re too small an industry to have virtually every vendor reinventing what should be shared infrastructure. Again, Chamberlain says it well when he states:

“To give one example, its an enormous waste of money for Microsoft and Apple to both develop lower level functionality to interface with identical hardware. No one buys an OS based on how elegantly it communicates with its serial bus. If these companies agreed to share technology that was identical in both systems they could spend their money competing on the things that consumers actually care about.”

I guess this particularly hit home for me because I remember back to a couple of years ago, organizing a meeting of the other Presidents of the major ILS vendors (well, except one and you can probably guess who that was) at an ALA conference and making this same pitch to them. As I said to them at the time, “if we started with a clean sheet of paper, designing a new ILS system, none of us would come up with what we’re selling right now.” I also pointed out that to reinvent an ILS, from the ground up was a major expenditure that most firms couldn’t and wouldn’t want to bear. So, I made the pitch that we all join together and build that new system, with the core being shared code (either open source, or code controlled by a foundation of which you had to be a member or else you paid a fee to use it). I then made the pitch that each vendor could then focus on developing extensions and add-ons to that base set of shared infrastructure code. To the credit of all the attendees, everyone expressed interest and started listing out problems that would have to be solved for it to work. We all went our ways and then outside forces intervened and companies were sold/combined and some of the people that had sat around that table disappeared from the industry. It was a disappointment but I still believe in the core concept and that’s why I found Chamberlain’s post so interesting.

He goes on to say:

“there will always be parts of software that rely on closed source just as there is still proprietary technology in cars. But I think you’ll eventually see those closed source implementations resting on an Open Source Foundation and the consumer will be better off for it.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Which is why the next post I read by Peter McCracken of Serials Solutions also struck a chord with me. (In the interest of full disclosure, Serials Solutions is a partner of CARE Affiliates). First, let me state that I have great respect for Peter and what he has accomplished in this industry. It’s really very impressive. At the same time, I’m concerned when I read posts like this because it shows there is still much to be understood about open source and the movement behind it. Now, of course, you expect a provider of proprietary based products to strongly defend what they’re doing and to point out the problems of what they might see as an impending threat (after all, Microsoft spends fortunes doing this!). But if we’re assuming forthrightness in what is being said, it misses the following points:

1. Most open source vendors are not telling you that you should use open source because it is free. Of all the ones I deal and interact with, they go out of their way to avoid saying this. What they do say is that you will have:

a. A competitive environment in which to bid costs like software maintenance and development of new features. Therefore, you’ve obtained some protection from price hikes (how about that annual cost-of-living increase? Adds up, doesn’t it?) that seem unreasonable.

b. The ability to have a level of control both over your budget and direction that you don’t have with proprietary software. The library automation industry is itself, littered with systems that were bought and then phased out, often to the dismay of the libraries using them. This simply can’t happen with open source. So, no unexpected budget surprises. Furthermore if your vendor won’t put a feature in your software that you desperately need, or if they as this post claims can happen “sold you some vaporware” — then hire a programmer and get it put in. You can’t easily do that with proprietary software, but you certainly can with open source.

2. Quoting McCracken’s post again:

“One person representing a commercial service pointed out that they would often reply to Requests for Proposals that contained many absolute requirements and when they didn’t win the contract, they’d discover that some open source solution that didn’t meet many of the requirements had been selected. So folks are applying different selection criteria to systems based on their open source-ness. Both Marshall and the vendor said that was a problem.”

I’ll concede this is likely true, but I would submit that the reason this is happening is that the market still hasn’t really figured out how to ask the right questions in their analysis of open source software, in order to quantify/qualify these criteria. Too often that criteria probably resides in the “gut-feel” that this is new, exciting and they should be part of it. At worse it is a reaction to some of what has happened in the software market due to acquisitions and products, customers wanted and/or were using, being aimed for the software scrap yards.

Maybe a better way to address this concern would be to start developing a new set of questions to make for a fair comparison. For example, I’d suggest:

• How many software enhancements do you receive per/year?
• How many are sitting in your queue?
• How many of those actually make it into a new release of the product?
• In what time frame (from the point submitted to the point they’re in the product)?
• At what cost?
• Will you provide the source code to our institution so that we can develop features we need but that your company is unable to do?
• Can we then share those features with other customers?
• Will you assure us our product will not be terminated without our agreement and with minimal financial impact on our budget?

There are more we could list here, but you get my point and you can read my previous posts (here and here) to see topics that need questions developed in order to have a truly fair comparison of open source and proprietary solutions.

The bottom line here is, as I’ve often said, is that open source is NOT, in-and-of-itself, the end goal of library automation. It is a step on the pathway of software development. What it does, what it is leading us to and what everyone needs to understand is that the open source movement is about customer freedom, customer control and the ability to make sure needs of an organization are addressed in the most financially efficient manner possible for that organization. Open source is NOT going to replace proprietary software. It will change it. In order for that maximum efficiency to be realized, we need to move towards a scenario where core infrastructure should be seen as a commodity and should be open source. Proprietary vendors should develop great new features and functionality on top of that code, as the post that started me down this path describes. That will result in the most efficient use of resources by the vendors and far greater efficiency in the markets they serve. The library marketplace is too small to do this any other way.

Yes, no doubt about it, I’ve been neglectful of my blog recently. It isn’t because I wanted to be, it’s just a matter of “stuffing 10 pounds in a 5 pound sack”. CARE Affiliates has been a busy operation. It also isn’t because I haven’t been writing, because I have. Just this week Sol Lederman, author of the FederatedSearchBlog posted a review I wrote about a chapter in a new book that covers using RFP’s to purchase federated search systems. I’ve long been critical of the way this profession uses RFP’s. I’ve published an article on the topic before that while now in need of updating, still outlines substantial costs and problems with these tools. I’ve suggested an approach in another article I co-published. At least one company has been formed to try and address the problem for this profession. Yet, until it gets focus on a much wider level, they’ll continue to remain a costly and inefficient purchasing tool. Everyone agrees they’re painful. I guess not yet painful enough to really do anything about it.

In my local paper today (Roanoke Times, Sunday, March 16, 2008) was an editorial about a library program that concluded with the statement “They should continue to do (the program), but not in its current form.” That is a telling statement and that same statement could be made about a lot of librarianship today.

Maurice Line, in his article Librarianship as it is practiced: a failure of intellect, imagination and initiative says:

“Unless we can see our future in a far broader context, we may not have a future. Our territory is being lost while we think we are defending it, because ware defending the form and not the substance, and the substance is changing.”

It seems to me one way that could be done is for libraries to realize that the same forces that are creating open source; interoperability, collaboration, flexibility, sustainability, and service for the customer are forces that could also have an interesting result if applied to librarianship. The result of the combination of these forces is community. It is power through collaboration. It builds on the fact that the cost of communication today is so near to zero, that we have a tightly interlinked global society that can share, enhance and implement ideas quickly. It means that whoever can do something, DOES it. It means that everyone quickly benefits in the result (not just the producer). User needs are more quickly communicated, understood and acted upon. Bottom line, the community of users has become the community of doers. How can we apply that to librarianship?

Let’s start with the question; what is librarianship? The “Classic” definition of librarianship, from Wikipedia, is:

“A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is, simply stated, the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs.”

However, let me possibly restate the obvious here and point out that librarians are increasingly NOT the owners of information any more. Just like companies supporting open source do not own the software they distribute and/or host, the same is true of libraries. Information is everywhere and in abundance. I’m frequently puzzled when I hear librarians express concern that their materials budgets are being cut and they can’t add as many resources as they did in the previous year. Really? Librarians actually have access to more information resources than they’ve ever had and most of it is free. All they have to do is use it. It can still be supplemented with the licensed and held information that does sit in their libraries.

Librarians still organize physical information, but as we all know, digital content is growing fast and is the form in which most information is now created, or migrating, and will continue to exist well into the future. The problem is that librarians aren’t organizing nearly enough of that information. In addition, their processes won’t scale to handle the amount of digital content that we have. One way that it might be possible is if librarians adopted the principles of open source and engaged the community of users in these processes (more on this in a moment).

It’s also important to remember, that in most cases, as librarians you’re physically not going to be where the users are when they come into contact with information. That’ll only happen, when you can be there virtually.

Just like what is happening with Open Source Software and like what you’re seeing with companies like Index Data, Equinox, LibLime and CARE Affiliates, librarianship needs to become a set of premium services, only based on information instead of software.

Given that, I continue to be amazed that what is built at OCLC and by many proprietary vendors are products and services for librarians when what we should be building are primarily products and services for users.

Is that harsh? Let’s look at a couple of examples:

1. Reference Services. If a user has a question, they have numerous options for getting an answer today. As we all know, Google is likely the first stop for many people. According to OCLC’s surveys, some very small percentage of users will start at a library website. In between is a wide range of services, ranging from Amazon’s Askville to ChaCha’s Guided Search Service to OCLC’s QuestionPoint that will provide answers to a users question. I would encourage the reader to look at and compare each of these services as it is terribly insightful in understanding what I’m describing. Askville and ChaCha both use community in helping people get answers to their questions. QuestionPoint uses only librarians. Which do you think will be more successful?

2. Inter-Library Loan. Look at what LibraryThing and OpenLibrary or Google Books are doing. They all put the emphasis on access to the item. If you can wait, you can get it from free if your local library has it, or if you want it quickly, sometimes for a cost, it can potentially be delivered to you wherever you are. Which might mean downloading the PDF, or printing it, printing on demand for a cost or buying a publisher copy for a fee. However, you get the item. Now compare that with our traditional ILL processes which are typically, mediated, slow and often involve “deflection” policies to bounce the request around to other places in order to get it filled. However it’s done, it is normally not nearly as fast as these other competing services.

I could go on, but you get the point. Our libraries of today, their organizations, associations and proprietary vendors seem only to want to crack the doors, not open them! Its time we create OpenLibrarianship, a new model of librarianship that embraces the power of community, the ideas of Web 2.0 and the ideas that have created open source for the benefit of all. Here is just a quick list of starter ideas for consideration:

1. Why don’t we, as library professionals, set up community site and ask communities of online users what they want their library to do for them? Let’s draft some of the best and the brightest people in the field to start the conversations. Let’s get a conversation going.

2. Why not allow your library users to enter their book/serials collections in your catalog (like LibraryThing or maybe in conjunction with LibraryThing) AND for those that agree, let them loan those items to others using your ILS?

3. Open up the doors of your library and allow anyone who wants to use your library and its resources to do so. If they’re not a resident or a student, use a credit card as the basis for service.

4. For those that haven’t already, offer repository services and allow anyone who wants to enter objects into it (as long as it meets certain basic policy guidelines) to do so. Encourage them to enter their family histories, local history, and genealogy; anything unique to your community that would be of interest to others. We tend to make repositories very difficult to get things in and to open them up!

5. Put librarians where users have information needs, for instance in local bookstores. Maybe it’s a real person; maybe it’s a chat service on the bookstore PC. Cut a deal with the bookstores and have any sale that results from the librarian’s advice, result in your library getting a small percentage of the sale to cover the cost of the person offering that service. Bookstores are libraries without librarians. Fix that.

6. Organize the digital information on the Web. Apply your skills to building subject portals and/or search tools that do the same. Look at the Hiking Outpost website as a partial example of what libraries could be doing.

7. Allow users to send you a copy of their self-published books and create catalog records for them. Put them in WorldCat. There are many websites for self-publishing. Cut deals with those operations, like you have with Amazon, where you get a percentage of any sale that results from the user finding the item as a result of the metadata records you’ve created.

8. Rethink ILL. Get out of the way of the users and let them handle the service themselves! Yes, there are costs involved, let your users decide if it is worthwhile and if it is, let them enter their credit card to cover those costs. The only acceptable result is to get your user the information they need, in some usable form, in “x” days! I don’t care if it’s a PDF, the physical item, or some other digital form. Get it to them. “Deflection policies” are NOT a way to increase your fill rates, not really…

9. Open up your acquisitions selection and approval process. Make it web-based and let representative users vote on what gets added to your library and what doesn’t. Get them involved.

10. Get your library catalog plugged into every e-learning system in your area! It is anathema to me that, from within online courses, I can’t search and access library resources. If your system doesn’t support this, begin the process of replacing your system!

11. Why not offer extensive metadata for on items to Ebay (start with the books)? Why not help them sell their book, video and related collections by making them more findable using all this metadata you’ve spent years and fortunes in creating? Again, a deal with Ebay could result in revenue.

12. Enhance user supplied metadata. Users are now tagging their own digital objects. Offer a service where they can have that metadata reviewed, enhanced, authority services applied, etc. Tagging clouds are a first step and the ability for librarians to enhance their value by the addition of their skills to that data is waiting. Note that is not to say you control it, but you enhance it!

The Web represents the largest library ever known to mankind. It’s global, multi-lingual, and accessible from virtually everywhere and contains all types of content. If you want to be a librarian, then you must understand, that is your collection and that is what you must build your services on if you want to have an increasing role in the future of users.

Now, I know these few ideas obviously ignore political realities, funding issues and some of them might even be plain bad ideas for a host of reasons I’m not even thinking about. That’s really not the point however. The point is to think about all those forces that are bringing you open solutions, open services and yes, open source. They are: choice, collaboration, use of global talent, responsiveness, competition, reduced costs, and returning to the community. Take those forces and use them in conjunction with this starter set of ideas. Improve, delete, contribute, implement, revise them and send them back to the profession of librarianship. It’ll will serve as a good start on using the power of community to start creating OpenLibrarianship.

I’m very pleased to tell you that I’ve been invited by Talis to join their new, regularly scheduled Library 2.0 Gang podcast program. For those of you who want to hear more of my thoughts, they’ll now be available not only in this Blog, but through my participation in the Talis Podcasts which I’ll also load on the CARE website as they become available.

This is an offer I found quite flattering. I have the greatest respect for TALIS and their team. They do some very interesting things for the profession and their podcasts are certainly among those things. To be offered a regular slot as a participant is, I hope, an indication that they believe my perspective offers listeners real value and/or interest. I’ve always tried to be straightforward and educational in my approach to these opportunities and I’ll hope this opportunity represents verification that this is an appreciated approach.

I haven’t yet heard who the other regular participants will be, but if they’re of the same quality as those in the last Library 2.0 Gang podcast I participated in, this should be a lively, interesting and at times, controversial set of podcasts. The topics will apparently cover wide range, with the first being on open source topics covered at the recent COD4LIB conference in Portland. I was at SUN Worldwide Education and Research Conference (if you want an invite to join this community, contact me) that week, but I look forward to discussing this topic and the others that will follow.

Please remember, that both this blog and these podcasts are at their best when you provide feedback. They are intended to be the start of a dialog, not the end. So listen in and join in by sending me, or the other participants, your thoughts and comments. We’ll look forward to hearing from you.

OpenTranslators have been the subject of much attention and much discussion since the product announcement at ALA Mid-Winter. Much of the attention focused on what is the definition of open? The recent blog post at Hangingtogether.org and at Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog have been particularly thoughtful and fair in their analysis of the discussion.

With the announcement last week that SerialsSolutions and WebFeat were merging, there was new discussion and speculation about OpenTranslators, the joint product offering of CARE Affiliates, Index Data and Webfeat (now SerialsSolutions).

Many people have contacted us to ask what we think of the merger and what we thought the result would be on our joint product offering.

First, we think it is important to say that we were called by SerialsSolutions administration before the announcement was released both to let us know what was happening and to assure us of the continued interest in the partnership and success of the OpenTranslators product. This has been confirmed in writing at the SerialsSolutions website where the FAQ document specifically states, in part: “The OpenTranslators project is a quasi-open source collection of translators, distributed by CARE Affiliates and Index Data. This project provides a layer that allows applications to access the library of WebFeat translators. The translators are neither open source nor free, but the access layer is open source. We plan to continue supporting this project and helping it grow.” So, we believe that based on all of this, the intent is there and we will continue to be able to offer and grow this product under this new partnership.

At a more personal level, we want to note that we’ve long worked with both Todd Miller, the CEO of WebFeat (and well before he founded WebFeat) and Jane Burke, the Vice President and General Manager of SerialsSolutions (and again, we’ve known Jane since back in her CLSI days). These are two people who are fearsome competitors and savvy, sharp business people. We have a great deal of admiration for the skills of each and we congratulate them both on this transaction. It is truly a win-win for everyone, including the new joint customer base of the soon to be merged operation. We’re pleased to be partners with them.

As for the larger market changes that might result from this merger, we can only speculate. But, if we look at the history of the people and companies involved, there are some things that should likely be expected, including:

1. As a merged operation, they will have a large customer base. When that is coupled with an innovative company run by leading-edge thinkers and management, there is power to transform marketplaces and to bring attention to those transformations.

2. WebFeat and SerialsSolutions both know and understand libraries and the finances that run them. Both companies were focused on offering affordable prices, high levels of functionality and highly scalable solutions. This merger underscores the likelihood that will continue. Speculation that this consolidation reduces competition and the likelihood for price increases ignores this history and the reality that there is still plenty of competition out there.

Some of the more interesting areas to watch will be:

1. Cambridge Information Group, the parent company of ProQuest and SerialsSolutions, is clearly going to continue its acquisitions. While they’ve stayed away from some of the more traditional automation products like the ILS, they’re clearly focusing on digital library tools. I’ve no doubt we’ll continue to see them add to their suite of holdings and, as they do, the integration of the products/services to offer an even more complete digital library solution the likes of which we can only speculate.

2. Will SerialsSolutions succumb to the temptation to make their growing suite of middleware less than vendor neutral when it comes to the content upon which that middleware is operating? When you own the content (and there is quite a bit within the CIG holding companies!) and the middleware, it will be hard to resist the temptation to do so. But again, these are savvy, smart leaders at work here and they know librarians would likely express concern if that happened. Would it stop them from buying? That would probably be highly dependent upon how well content and middleware are integrated and what advantages it offers and to what degree, if any, it specifically excluded other content. Of course, the other question that needs to be asked is: Would librarians even be the likely targets of these kinds of new integrated product offerings? There’s a question deserving a whole separate post!

Bottom line, we see this new merger as a positive development for all concerned and all the surviving products. We look forward to seeing what the leadership of CIG and its holding companies do now and we look forward to seeing where Todd Miller emerges next and with whatever new and likely amazing product he’ll develop.

We found this post on the “Federated Search Blog” about our recent announcement at ALA concerning OpenTranslators. It raises some very important questions, conveys a misunderstanding and possibly some philosophical differences, but the important point is that it provides an opportunity to discuss why we believe OpenTranslators are important.

CARE Affiliates(TM) believes, as does the writer of the Blog above, that the OpenTranslators amounts to something “That… is pretty significant” in the federated searching world. What we did, was to bring together a total of three companies, each contributing expertise, products and ideas to create a new way for users to have access to thousands and thousands of databases, some of which support proprietary API’s of their own, but most of which support no interface at all beyond the end-user HTML interface. These have to be parsed and interpreted to support metasearching. Some represent freely available content, but most are subscription databases of the sort used in the hundreds by a typical library to meet patron needs. So bottom line, what does that mean? It means that the search interface used by your library and thus, your users, is yet further decoupled from the content underneath.

First, a little history. Years ago (and it is still true in some cases) if you wanted to search certain content, you could only do it using the interface provided by the company that assembled that content. The interface and content were tightly coupled. This was very frustrating for users as it meant that for each resource they wanted to use, they likely had to learn a new search interface.

Federated search tools eliminated that problem and allowed a common search interface layer to many resources. This was better for end users who now only had to learn one search interface; that provided by their federated search vendor. The downside was that in order to search to all those content resources, there had to be a translator or connector developed that could talk the language of the original content providers search interface and translate that to the language of the new federated search providers interface. So in the end, the vendors’ translators/connectors were tightly coupled to the vendors’ search interface. The search interface had moved up a layer in the stack, and you as the customer had more options/choices, but we saw the possibility to provide even more choices.

Our colleagues at Index Data(TM) had built software to take SRU/SRW/Z39.50 searches and translate them for use with translators/connectors. Couple that with the fact that we had signed a deal with WebFeat(TM) in August of 2007 that allowed us to sell their translators with our products. We did (and do) this with the metasearch/federated search application called MasterKey.

While we thought it was very progressive of WebFeat to allow us to couple an OSS based metasearch/federated search solution to their translators, all three companies had a vision of carrying the concept yet further. Why not take the Index Data SRU/SRW/Z39.50 translators, couple them with WebFeat’s translators and allow the end user to pick the metasearch interface of their choice? It could be their existing OPAC. It could be anything that could talk SRU/SRW/Z39.50; a large and growing selection of software products, both open and proprietary; it could even include homegrown applications and mashups. It would mean that we had yet further decoupled content from the search interface and were putting total control of the interface selected into the hands of the customers. That was the basis of the OpenTranslators announcement.

Now, with that history and background, let’s answer some of the questions/points raised in the Blog post that started this conversation.

First, we want to offer a correction to the statement that “WebFeat has a large number of translators (connectors to SRU/SRW/Z39.50 databases).” Actually, Webfeat has translators to thousands of databases that are licensed, proprietary content, the vast majority of which are NOT accessible through SRU/SRW/Z39.50. Only with the announcement of OpenTranslators does that become true.

“1. How “open” are these OpenTranslators?” Our response is that what is “Open” is that we’ve taken open standards and enabled access to the translators. As a result this allows you to leverage existing software applications, programmer’s toolkits, as well as writing your own applications to interact with the translators, through SRU/SRW/Z39.50. Yes, the translators themselves incorporate proprietary technology and will continue to do so. Anyone who has tried to develop a translator will know it is a complicated and demanding process, and that the final product requires constant monitoring and maintenance because back-end interfaces are subject to change at any moment.  Consequently, it is an application that is ideally suited to operate as a hosted service, where revenues is earned from keeping the translators up-to-date and backed bu sufficient CPU cycles to meet requirements.

It is also important to note that we’ve always said that while we believe in OSS, we also know and understand there will be times where we will need to marry OSS and proprietary technologies to provide a total solution. So, bottom line, what we’ve done, is to expose proprietary technology through open, standards-based protocols as a way for end users to pick the metasearch/federated search interface of their choice and still have access to vast amounts of content. It allows developers to focus more attention on interfaces and usability, and less on sorting out how to access a given database. It also dramatically opens the field of search-oriented projects that may be undertaken either by libraries or by startup companies. We believe that this is a dramatic step and one that qualifies as “open”. (We’ll expand on this later in this posting).

“2. How does access to content work when authentication is involved if the connectors to the SRU/SWR/Z39.50 database are WebFeat connectors and there’s a CARE/Index Data gateway in between?” When the service is configured for a customer, WebFeat handles authentication against each database on behalf of the customer. All you need to provide to the OpenTranslator is a customer ID, which is provided to you when you sign on.

“3. What will access cost? What is the licensing model?” As noted elsewhere in the original blog posting, this is a hosted service, so what customers pay is an annual subscription to use both the CARE/ID OpenTranslators and the WebFeat translators. The cost is based on the number of translators used and, as with most such services, the more you buy, the cheaper they get. One yearly cost covers both subscriptions. Interested parties should contact CARE Affiliates for a quote.

“4. Are there really 10,000 databases accessible from this service as advertised in the press release?” WebFeat states that they have 9,000+ databases in their translator library and Index Data provides many thousands more pure Z39.50 connectors. Together, it totals over 10,000. Do some of those databases come from the same content providers? Sure. Like every industry, once you get good at something, you tend to acquire similar companies and the result has been that there is no longer one company per database, nor should there be. Cost efficiencies result from using the same infrastructure to supply access to many different kinds of content. This helps keep costs down for the end users.

“5. Who is hosting access? Is there a plan to handle scaling of the service if it becomes real popular?” Both CARE/Index Data and WebFeat use hosting centers. These kinds of companies offer real benefits for these types of services because they offer redundant processors, telecommunication lines, mirrored disks and instant fail-overs. Plus, they can add additional capacity, usually within hours of a request. So, are we well positioned to scale this service? Absolutely, we’ve planned for it and we’re counting on it.

So, here is a reason why we think OpenTranslators are so important. For OSS to go beyond being an academic practice; beyond being an activity practiced in basements in people’s spare time; and finally beyond being just the sexy word that it is at the moment, then it’s really important that we work out ways to make OSS (and for that matter, open standards, which is really a variation on the theme) coexist with, and indeed support commercial activities. Ultimately that is how things will get done and how usable products will result.

We’re looking for as many areas of synergy as we can, rather than painting OSS as being a threat or even necessarily a total alternative to commercial players. We believe it *should* be viewed as a threat to the stale business practices of many current vendors, but it shouldn’t be viewed as being in opposition to commercial endeavors. OpenTranslators make important headway not only because of what it does for metasearch/federated searching, but also as an example of how total solutions can be assembled using best-of-breed products and companies to deliver what customers want, directly to their desktops. We are crossing new ground that will lead to better products and services for everyone. That is what OpenTranslators do and why they are important.

There are moments in time, when you know things have changed, not just a little, but a lot. Sometimes, they’re political (in my memory, things like JFK’s election and assassination, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King’s assassinations), sometimes global (landing on the moon or September 11th), sometimes personal (you and your spouse have a child), and sometimes they’re professional. I’ve just returned home with this feeling about the profession fresh in my mind now that ALA is over and now that I’ve had a moment to reflect on what I saw, heard and participated in with regard to the library automation landscape. There is a shift underway in library automation. It is major and I won’t be surprised if it becomes seismic in the end. Let me explain why I think that is the case.

When we were planning for this conference, we had a feeling this would be one where people would want to know about open source software and solutions. We felt we had an opportunity to provide information — a lot of information, and people would seek it out and readily absorb it and make decisions using it. Based on that feeling, we had planned a number of seminars in our booth and our colleagues at LibLime did the same. These seminars were focused on providing, via library professionals and colleagues, descriptions of what could be done with open source software, the possibilities, probabilities and processes. We launched the seminars not knowing for sure if we were taking the pulse right, but definitely thinking we were. We walked into the conference wondering if we would be talking to a few people or, would it be standing room only? It did not take long for us to get the answer. After the first one, we knew we were going to be dealing with a lot of standing room only sessions. It didn’t matter if the session was on integrated library systems, OPAC replacements or repositories, people seized the opportunities provided to hear, to learn and to discuss with colleagues, what was happening. (See the pictures below). They were standing in the aisles, in any open spot, leaning in, listening intently, watching closely and nodding approvingly. They liked what they were seeing, liked what they were hearing, wanting to be part of something that they too could feel growing, embracing them and providing answers to a set of problems that had been dumped on them without their consent, by those whose needs concerns are expressed solely through spreadsheets. The customers of those firms were saying “Enough, it’s time to look at the options.” And open source is one of those options, one where the freedom, the control, the focus on service rather than dollars and the better return on investment for the librarian, rather than the vendor is presenting an overwhelming set of reasons to consider new options. The number of people leaving business cards requesting follow-up is very impressive.

A friend and colleague, who I deeply respect, said to me: “The story of this conference, with regard to automation, would be to have a picture of the open source vendor booth(s) at last ALA and then to compare it to the picture of the same thing at this ALA.” Well, fortunately, I have a few of those pictures and I enclose them below. What is the saying? “A picture is worth a thousand words??” Well, in that light, I’ll leave it to these pictures to finish the majority of this post…

This was the open source booth at the last show, six months ago. Three vendors sharing a 10×20 booth:

This is from ALA, Mid-Winter 2008, just completed, six months later. Note the people standing in the aisles to hear about Open Source Software and Solutions.

Compare our presence below (this is from setup, before the doors opened for people to surge in) to that in the photo from Mid-Winter (two pictures above). Two 20×20 booths and we could have used more…