Search results

Six vendors discuss the issues that most affect their role in the implementation of integrated systems within libraries. Major areas of concern include: 1) expectations versus reality, 2) the nature of the vendor‐library relationship, and 3) the challenges of incorporating new technology and standards.

The automation process has a tendency to reveal strengths and weaknesses in a library, its management style, its organizational structure, and the abilities of its staff members. What are the educational and training requirements needed by professional librarians to manage effectively the automation process? This question is discussed by representatives of five major library vendors: Michel Ridgeway and Dean Gattone (Geac), Alison Curtis, (Utlas), Susan Olson (OCLC), James J. Michael (Data Research Associates), and Gene Robinson (CLSI). They stress the need for a solid foundation in management and communication skills, and a commitment to continuing education. Technology changes so rapidly that detailed knowledge of a current system is less important than knowing how to evaluate the capabilities of a future system.

Representatives of six prominent library system vendors—Joseph R. Matthews (Inlex), Mike Monahan (Geac), Kelvin Browne (Utlas), Carl Lee (VTLS), Michael J. Mellinger (Data Research) and Stephen R. Salmon (Carlyle)—address the key issues related to system performance. From their experiences and perspectives as vendors, they address the issues of 1) designing, configuring and sizing systems, 2) the establishment of performance criteria, 3) the use of benchmark and acceptance tests, 4) the risks of miscalculations, 5) the roles of the vendor, consultant and library, and 6) related topics.

Standards are important in all areas of library automation. Standards will facilitate the linking of different types of systems within one library as well as systems that perform similar functions in different libraries. Stephen Salmon (Carlyle), George Sidman (INLEX), Richard Woods (Biblio‐Techniques), Mike Monahan (Geac), Richard Goldberg (CLSI), Stephen M. Silberstein (Innovative Interfaces), and M.E.L. Jacob (OCLC) express their views on existing standards, and the need for and probable course for developing additional standards.

When the initial library networks were established in the United States, they provided affordable, online automation services that were available from virtually no other source. The surge of automation experienced by American libraries for the past two decades has altered the historical relationships that characterize library cooperation. Local networks are being created and machine‐readable products previously available only from the networks are now being packaged on optical media and distributed to individual institutions. With these technological advances, the need for, services offered by, and financial viability of the networks have begun to undergo dramatic change. This is also a time of great opportunity for libraries and networks. There is on the horizon what may be the infrastructure for a national information network. The realization of this network will require close cooperation of librarians, who have embraced the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model for networking, and members of the academic and research community, which is still relying heavily on the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocols (TCP/IP) for communications purposes.

Companies that supply libraries with automation technology are part of the computer‐industry marketplace. However, vendors that serve the library component of this marketplace face problems not typical of the industry as a whole. Significant and unique problems include the protracted selection processes employed by libraries, the very slow and drawn‐out payment cycles, the dependence of the libraries on vendors, and the adversarial relationships that frequently exist between the libraries and vendors. These, and related issues, are discussed by representatives of eight prominent automation firms: Joseph R. Matthews (INLEX), James J. Michael (Data Research Associates), Harry Porteous (Geac), Gene Robinson (CLSI), Stephen R. Salmon (Carlyle), Stephen Silberstein (Innovative Interfaces), Phyllis Bova Spies (OCLC Local Systems), and Harriet Valázques (Utlas).

Representatives of five prominent library integrated system vendors—M.E.L. Jacob (OCLC), Joe Matthews (Inlex), Mike Monahan (Geac), Gene Robinson (CLSI), and Steve Salmon (Carlyle)—express their views on ethics and the marketplace. The need for ethical behavior by all sectors of the marketplace—librarians, consultants, and vendors—is emphasized and illustrated. Four sidebars are included: one addresses the need for customer data rights standards; others contain the code of ethics/practice issued by three professional organizations for consultants.

The library, the vendor, and the consultant have their own roles to play in the RFP process. The library is responsible for identifying its objectives and needs. These must be clearly understood and stated. The vendor's responsibility is to develop a creative solution to the library's particular needs, based on the information provided in the RFP and the functionality currently available. The responsibility of the consultant is essentially to educate. In order to get the system it needs, the library must not abdicate from the decision‐making process. The RFP is only one step in the process of locating a vendor and a system that meet the library's needs.

Alison Curtis, Joseph Matthews, Dan Haverkamp, Charles Farley, and James Michael offer their comments on the future of library automation from their perspective as vendors. This forum updates a similar symposium published four years earlier. When read in tandem, the 1985 forum and the 1989 version cover most of the same technologies (CD‐ROM, OPACs, gateways, but not expert systems and FAX) and issues (standards, co‐operation, money) but there is a difference. It is one of emphasis. In 1985 the emphasis seemed to be on the potential of new technologies to solve problems. Today the emphasis is more on the problems to be encountered and conquered if these technologies are to reach their real potential.

The winter 1991 issue of Reference Services Review featured an annotated bibliography of literature on Christopher Columbus from 1970 to 1989. That literature covered such topics as Columbus' ancestry, heraldry, and the locations of both his American landfall and burial site. This annotated checklist focuses mainly on Columbus' legacy, on works that offer a dissenting point of view from most previous writings about Columbus (and on works that react to the dissenters), on material written by Native American and other non‐European authors, and on materials published by small and noncommercial presses.