Blog Posting 2:
Week 3 and Week 4
Week 3 Information Retrieval Systems “Oz”
“Toto,
I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!” Dorothy exclaimed aloud to her dog,
Toto, upon exiting the house that landed in the Oz in “The Wizard of Oz”. Readings from Week 3 illustrate the dramatic
and exciting changes in the field of Library and Information Science, as we are
moving into the digital world of the New Millennium, much as the film industry
moved from sepia tone/black and white, silent movies to “talkies” and the
advent of Technicolor during the Industrial Age. There is no turning back...“follow the yellow
brick road” to new technological applications... “there’s no place like home”
in our library world (IMDb, 1990).
Authors Sharon Q. Yang and Melissa
A. Hofmann reported their findings in “Next generation or current generation? : A study of the OPACs of 260 academic
libraries in the USA and Canada”. The
authors had reviewed earlier studies on the topic of “Next Generation Catalog
improvements to the OPAC” and narrowed their own search to a sample of
universities listed in Peterson’s Four-Year Colleges 2009, aiming for a random
10% of 260 academic libraries but obtaining results from 233 institutions in
actuality (Yang&Hofmann, 2011, p.266).
Authors Yang and Hofmann crystalized
for the reader the gap between current services offered and the ideal services
that should be offered in university libraries in North America, by identifying
“12 functionalities of the Next Generation Catalog (NGO)” and how each feature
has been incorporated, and to what degree, with the current cataloging systems
in use. The 12 functionalities that
should be incorporated are: “state-or-the-art
web interface, enriched content, faceted navigation, simple keyword search and
advanced search, relevancy, ‘did you mean?’, recommendations/related materials,
user contribution, RSS feeds, integration with social networking sites, and
persistent links” (Yang&Hofmann, 2011, pp. 270-271). The option of a spell-check feature in the
search box was also cited to improve user-access across the board
(Yang&Hofmann, 2011 p.283). The
authors further explained their more detailed findings regarding each of the
twelve features. Yang and Hofmann
concluded, “It seems that academic libraries in the US and Canada have a long
way to go before OPACs become the true next generation
catalog”(Yang&Hofmann, 2011,p. 286).
“Which way do we go” down this
yellow brick road? Upon reading “What
Qualifications and Skills are Important for Digital Librarian Positions in
Academic Libraries? A Job Advertisement
Analysis" by Youngok Choi and Edi Rasmussen, the digital librarian will
have an important place in the digital library world. “The study shows that current awareness and
appropriate technological skills and experience in the digital library
environment, knowledge and experience in creation and management of digital
information, and metadata are the most required positions with high emphasis on
management skills” (Choi&Rasmussen, 2009, p.465). Just as Dorothy had to retrieve items in
order to satisfy the Wizard of Oz, librarians must develop many different skill
sets in making the transition to the Next Generation Catalog.
Sources
Choi, Y. and Rasmussen, E.
(2009). What qualifications and skills
are important for digital librarian positions in academic libraries? A job advertisement analysis” in The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Vol.35, 5:457-467.
Yang, S.Q. and Hofmann, M.A. (2011).
Next generation or current generation?:
a study of the opacs of 260 academic libraries in the us and canada in Library High Tech, Vol.29 , 2:266-300.
Copyright
2013
Week 4 Integrated Library Systems “The
Beehive”
In “Management and Support of Shared
Integrated Library Systems”, authors Vaughan and Costello described the Integrated Library Systems of the 1980’s as
organized with a top-down form of support, having systems experts in
cataloging, acquisitions, circulation, and serials and the librarian and a
staff member at the site, but things have now changed (Vaughan & Costello,
2011, p.68). The new model should have a
dedicated systems librarian/ a central administrative site coordinator, who
coordinates all services and communications (Vaughan & Costello, et.al, p.
67), an organizational structure that brings to mind the Queen Bee of the
beehive, overseeing drones and worker bees, buzzing around the hive.
We are left to consider which
direction to pursue. The Web 2.0
environment has changed the way technologies can be used in libraries, as
authors Kinner and Rigda explained in “The Integrated Library System: From Daring to Dinosaur?” (p.408). Web technologies offer RSS feeds, wikis,
blogs, Web sites, tagging, social networking, interoperability, and can be
accessed through Open Source Software (OSS), creating the dilemma of whether we
retain records that point to a shelf location, or point to a networked location
or Web source (Kinner & Rigda, 2009, p.406).
In “The Next Generation Integrated
Library System: A Promise Fulfilled”,
authors Wang and Dawes state that the second generation Integrated Library
System must “manage resources and be built on a service oriented structure”
(Wang & Dawes, 2012, p.76) To summarize, it should have direct access and
communication within the ILS, security, interoperability, better user
interfaces, differentiation from the OPAC, and it should run on hardware. The New ILS should have comprehensive library
resources management, a system based on service oriented architecture, be
designed to improve workflow and efficiency, and possess the next generation
OPAC (Want & Dawes, et.al, p. 81). It
appears as if the Queen Bee is about to reorganize the hive.
Sources
Kinner, L. and Rigda, C. (2009).
The integrated library system: from daring to dinosaur? Journal
of Library Administration. vol.
49:4, 401-417.
Vaughan, J. and Costello, K. (2011).
Management and support of shared integrated library systems.
Information Technology and Libraries. vol. 30:2, 62-70.
Wang, Y. and Dawes, T.A. (2012).
The next generation integrated library system: a promise fulfilled. Information
Technology and Libraries. vol. 31:3,
76-84. Copyright
2013
Linda,
ReplyDeleteI love the comparison!! So true!!!