UK version of the Kindle

According to the BBC news, Amazon has at last released its Kindle ebook reader for the UK market. This is combined with the release of the latest update of the Kindle,  which is lighter and has more storage. Since release in 2007 the Kindle has been available only via Amazon’s US website but it is now also available from the UK website with more ebooks aimed at the UK market. This is an interesting move, especially as the Kindle is currently out of stock on the US version of the website (has all stock been diverted to the UK warehouses?). There’s a downloading arrangement with Vodaphone over their 3G service or a cheaper wi-fi only version.

It comes at a time when ebooks seem to have come to prominence (again?). Amazon say they are selling more ebooks than hardbacks – an important indicator but as most people buy paperbacks not quite epoch-changing just yet. More significantly, Apple’s iPad release a few weeks ago poses something of a market threat. The iPad of course isn’t just an ebook reader, more of a hand-held multifunctional device, but it can be used as an ebook reader . The Kindle is optimised for one purpose, and its e-ink technology probably makes it better for this one purpose than the iPad, but I suspect most people would rather carry one device on a train journey than 2? Amazon sensibly have also made available a Kindle reader app for the iPad, indicating that they’re hedging their bets.

Although several libraries have experimented with ebook readers and handheld devices the best course of action still seems unclear. For years we’ve supplied DRM-restricted ebooks viewable over the web (some with time-limited download options) but I’m not sure when one physical platform will emerge, and when we can expect users to start adopting it. I suspect I won’t be sitting on the fence for much longer however……

EIUG conference 2010

I’ve not blogged for a long while – doesn’t real life has an irritating habit of interrupting the virtual? However I was at my first European Innovative Users Group conference last week and thought it might be worth recording some thoughts from that.

The first thing that struck me was how relaxed it felt. In contrast to the past few COSI/DUG/HUG conferences this felt very easygoing. That’s probably partly due not being an organiser so I could sit back and let someone else do the worrying, but there was a relaxed friendly vibe to the sessions and the other attendees.I was struck by how open the III representatives seemed.

There were no great product announcements at the conference (maybe those have been held back for ALA?) but on the other hand as a newcomer I don’t see any massive gaps in III’s product suite compared with other suppliers. The main thing I’d come to see was of course Encore Synergy, III’s version of the new crop of Discovery tools (see also Summon, Primo Central, Ebsco Discover, etc.). Synergy looked good, although I think I’d want to ask more questions about the range of data suppliers to which it will link before committing (not that my library will have the funds to do so anytime soon!). I like the fact that it doesn’t need the extra complexity of Link Resolvers or Federated Search tools (although it will of course work with them if already present) – one of the problems with federated search has always been the added layer of complexity it gives to the search experience which the new Discovery tools avoid. EIUG are planning an Exchange of Experience day on this area which I hope to attend.

Encore Reporter, a web-based reporting tool, was the other product which the company were pushing strongly. This is a bit of a misnomer – it doesn’t actually need Encore Discovery to run and pulls statistics from the Millennium database as well as Encore. Its interesting to see also that it doesn’t use either the Millennium proprietary database or Oracle to hold its data, but instead pulls it into an independent  database. Its ability to import external data and to export to the OPAC/Encore looked good, such that if I was doing a new implementation today I’d see it as an essential core product rather than another bolt-on module.

The other valuable part of a user group conference is of course the user sessions. These were very varied, and reflected the same sort of pressures that my own library is facing, such as streamlining and integrating acquisitions and providing more information to the user on a static staffing count.

Overall, a good conference, and thanks in particular to the EIUG committee who worked so hard to make it so.

P.S. The photo? The conference dinner was in the Directors Box at Aston Villa and we had a tour of the ground beforehand.

The (1950s) future is here!

According to Marshall Breeding’s invaluable Library Technology Guides, Evanced have announced their new product BranchAnywhere. I’m really looking forward to seeing this: a giant vending machine containing at least 325 items including books, DVDs, etc. There’s an industrial robot inside the unit which copes with both taking the items off the shelves inside and putting them back in the right place. I hope it is glass-fronted so that we can see it work!

So its off again….?

According to this statement on the Liblime website the PTFS- Liblime merger is off again. There’s a brief statement that they couldn’t agree upon financial terms. No equivalent confirmation on the PTFS website however. Cue mass speculation in the library world about the reasons……?

Perceptions 2009

The latest of Marshall Breeding’s invaluable Perceptions surveys has just been published.  As you’ll know if you’ve seen the previous 2 years surveys, this looks at the library automation market from the point of view of the library, and is a very useful source to counterbalance the regular announcements made by the LMS suppliers. The supplier which comes out the best is a fairly new company Biblionix, whose system Apollo is marketed at small US public libraries. Perhaps by targetting a customer base with ‘similar’ needs they avoid having to spread development and support work as widely as some other suppliers?

From a personal point of view I’m pleased to see Innovative come out as what Breeding calls a strong performer – their average customer satisfaction score comes out as 7.13%, significantly above the other companies which I’d call direct competitors in the UK HE market. In the anonymised comments some customers do mention their high costs and the ‘closed’ nature of the system however. I was sad to see that the low scores for SirsiDynix of the previous 2 years have continued however, and their customers don’t seem much more impressed by their newest system Symphony than they are by the older ‘legacy’ products such as Horizon and Dynix Classic. Unfortunately there weren’t enough replies from Talis libraries to allow direct comparison in the main tables, but the detailed information which Breeding gives shows that while average satisfaction seems relatively high the company still has its issues.

What did surprise me was the relatively low enthusiasm for Open Source. Those libraries which have gone that way themselves seem keen – Breeding describes this as ‘a minority of early adopters voicing strong support’ – but there seems less interest in Open Source than I’d expected, even from those libraries which express dissatisfaction with their current system. Sarah Bartlett on the Panlibus blog wonders if this represents waning interest in Open Source, although it may just be that now it is becoming a genuine alternative that librarians are taking a more realistic attitude? I don’t know how realistic Open Source is for a library with perhaps one Systems Manager unless they use a support company such as PTFS, Biblibre or TTLLP?. Liblime comes under some criticism in the survey, even though I think the responses were probably all in before the news of the recent merger came out(?).  Interestingly those libraries which have installed Koha themselves without Liblime’s assistance rated it better than those who used Liblime, which perhaps represents different attitudes to the system rather than differences in the system itself.  Evergreen, mainly supported by Equinox, came in the middle of the satisfaction ratings.

So what is the state of the market? I’m not sure that the ‘traditional’ LMS can continue in its basic form for much longer, certainly for the academic market, as eresources grow ever more important and our users change their demands, needs and learning styles. Some companies seem more aware of this than others, and it is those who know their customers better who will survive, possibly shown in the success of Biblionix. Hence Marshall Breeding’s survey should be required reading for all LMS suppliers.

PTFS to acquire Liblime

Just heard the news that PTFS is to acquire Liblime. This is quite big news, not just for libraries already using Open Source, but also for the whole LMS sector. Liblime have over 500 libraries in the US, and PTFS’ European office is gradually building up an Open Source LMS customer base in Europe. The established LMS companies have been accused of complacency in the past, but this ought to stir them!

On whether it is good news for the OS LMS sector I’m staying on the fence for the time being. On one hand if it increases the use of OS LMS that can only be a good thing from the point of view of bringing fresh insight and ways of doing things into an LMS market which has become a little stale in some areas. However on the other hand it means that the merged company has a lot of influence over Koha, perhaps more than some people are comfortable with. There was a disagreement last year in the Koha camp about the ownership of the extra work Liblime has put in to create Enterprise Koha, and there was also a little friction with PTFS at one time as well. Hopefully these issues will be managed and Koha will continue to be developed according to user priorities. There are a few more companies emerging to support Koha at the moment such as Bywater Solutions so perhaps the risk is diminishing already.

The other thing that could be interesting is that PTFS are also licensed to support Evergreen. Supporting either Koha and Evergreen need not be exclusive, indeed a bit of cross-fertilisation could be productive. However marketing one over the other might not be such a good thing – the user should be aided to select the system which best meets her/his needs. Hopefully the new company will take this attitude, and in this case I look forward to developments!

Google Scholar and metasearching

Interesting blog from Jonathan Rochkind this morning. Metalib currently has a target for including Google Scholar in metasearches, and as a popular resource I imagine most implementations use it. However some libraries have had problems with it, and when they pursued the problem with Google they found that Google doesn’t allow metasearching and so their controls were cutting off metasearch engines as suspected bots. Ex Libris has now put out an email to customers to make them aware of this, and so the target is now being de-activated. Presumably other metasearch suppliers will have to do the same.

Obviously Ex Libris have to take this course of action so we can’t criticise them, but it is sad that Google isn’t prepared to allow metasearching. Google Scholar has targeted education, but isn’t prepared to embrace the open-ness of the best educational resources.  I appreciate that Search is a competitive market and that metasearch is in a way a competitor, but where libraries are trying to make researchers lives simpler by cutting down the multiple resources they must consult, Google isn’t willing to help in this. Hopefully if enough people point this out they may reconsider their decision.

Higher education funding

There’s an interesting juxtaposition of HE stories on the BBC news website this morning. The Russell Group has responded in the Guardian to government plans to reduce University funding over the next 3 years, pointing out the damage that it will cause to Higher Education in the UK. There’s a dramatic quotation:

“It has taken more than 800 years to create one of the world’s greatest education systems and it looks like it will take just six months to bring it to its knees.”

Compare and contrast that to another article arising from a student survey by a technology firm Olympus. This highights how seriously lack of money is affecting current students. Most are missing lectures to do part-time work to support themselves, and are worried about the longer-term benefit they will get from their degree.

These financial problems are arising from a government which must be regretting stating an intention for 50% of young people to attend Higher Education. While France and Germany are putting more money into their Universities, the UK is instead cutting funding and making it more difficult for students to find time to learn. The UK’s Universities are seen internationally as one of its strengths: cut them and in an increasingly-competitive world the UK loses another of its assets.

E-Books and strange cases

With the Kindle seemingly becoming hot property, and new ebook reader devices appearing on almost a daily basis, Dan D’Agostino has written a thought- provoking blog on how the latest developments may affect libraries. To summarise (apologies to him if  this reflects my interpretation of the article not what he wrote!), he suggests that by getting involved some years back, libraries have gone for the wrong technology path: users want e-books they can download onto their readers not e-books they can only read on a networked PC on campus. Moreover, by restricting our users to usage on a networked PC, the users are only scanning the material rather than reading it.

I have reservations on both points. Firstly, some ebook platforms do allow downloads – I know of Netlibrary and Dawsonera which allow time-limited pdf downloads which are usable on most ebook readers that I’m aware of. Secondly, I doubt that most UK HE undergraduates do more than scan any book, whether paper or electronic. They are looking for the information to fulfill their immediate need, so they grab those few facts (and hopefully don’t plagiarise them!) . Few undergraduates have the time to read books in full and I suspect that this has been true for longer than most academics would want to admit.

However the blog is useful in putting forward that just maybe a new platform is at last emerging (I’m not sure how many false starts it has had!) and that libraries need to do something about it. We need to keep up the pressure on e-book suppliers to allow time-limited downloads. We also need to become the recognised place for information on campus about this technology (if we don’t do this someone else will). I’m not sure I want to get too involved in the details yet: there seem to me to be too many competing formats for both the data and the ebook readers, but maybe that Open University model of issuing each user with the basic study materials for his/her course in electronic format on Day One is getting closer for the rest of us.

Stephen Abrams leaves SirsiDynix

Sad to see SirsiDynix’s  announcement that Stephen Abrams is leaving them. This is backed up by Stephen’s own blog posting where he learn that he’s going to Gale in January. Stephen has had a rocky road recently due to a rather ill-advised paper about open-source, and he does have a tendency to blur the boundaries between his roles as technology evangelist and company VP. Nevertheless I enjoyed talking with him when I was involved in things SD, and his presentations about Web 2, Library 2, and so on are both entertaining and thought-provoking. In his new role I hope we’ve not seen the last of him!