This session was very informative vis-a-vis what seems to be the prevailing hopes for what the new ILS versions will be like. Terry Reese and Kyle Banerjee reminded us that the ILS is merely a specialized inventory control system and makes up a small segment of our electronic resources, especially in academic libraries.
Both Terry and Kyle preferred an emendation to their topic’s title – instead of catalog, platform. This change allows us to talk about interoperability and standardization across vendors. For example, MARC format has been a standard in the library business for decades, yet even some ILS vendors still do not produce as if they understood the format. (I wonder how much of that is due to the vendors’ proprietary instincts.) One basic problem with most of the platforms is accessibility – can your Iphone give you access to your library’s catalog?
Kyle did a dog and pony show of some of the attempts currently on the Web – most of them depend upon an underlying ILS for the data. Among those he showed us were Evergreen, AquaBrowser, VuFind, Endeca, Primo, WorldCat Local, and Encore. A side criticism of all of them he made is that rarely on their respective facades could you find any identifying marks of the host library.
They concluded their presentation with about ten questions to ask of ourselves and our vendors, the necessity of identifying the details involved, and acknowledging the limits. One very important thing to remember – continuing on the current route will lead many libraries into consortia that will become nothing more than server farms (not exactly what libraries are about).
