Meeting on the ledge

I wasn’t able to blog from the conference as planned due to wireless problems in my hotel room, but Internet withdrawal symptoms have led to me finding alternative ways this afternoon…..

Overall, I think, it was a good conference in that the process of DUG and EUUG coming together as one group has continued (although there’s still some way to go), and the SD staff were friendly and good company. In particular I spent a while chatting to Talin Bingham over the conference dinner about the situation for UK Horizon users. Talin, as always, was very open and enthusiastic, putting the case that he has a limited number of developers and tries to allocate them to the most productive tasks for the long-term.

That long-term prognosis for UK Horizon people was not as rosy as I’d hoped on Monday. Axel Kaschte confirmed that the intention is to end Horizon development in the UK at our current 7.3.4. Although 7.4.1 will be available in the US it will not be available in the UK due to the extra cost of adding the UK enhancements. There was some limited good news in that there will be patches, for instance to ensure that 7.3.4 will work with XP service pack 3, and with MS Vista, but we won’t be getting things like EDI ordering that were only brought in with 7.4. Axel got rather a hard reception for this, understandably, and I pointed out to Talin that this abrupt halt to development doesn’t exactly endear SD to its Horizon customers. But this is of course a commercial world and in turn the seeming finality of the decision would make it easier for us to look elsewhere.

There was a lot of talk and previews of SD Enterprise. I didn’t see (maybe I missed?) the whizzy graphical concept map which Aquabrowser has although something of the kind was mentioned, but overall it looked good. The relevance ranking and fuzzy searching was nice. Although there were questions from the floor about a lack of boolean I think in the real world only Librarians use boolean in the OPAC! I’m still not convinced about it being a SaaS product, but this is only definite for version 1, so if my institution was to buy it, the chances are that we could continue to host locally.

More thoughts later when I’ve had chance to reflect on what I’ve heard and look at my scribbled notes…

My second SirsiDynix- based conference in 6 months! I was at CODI in Pittsburgh last November and am  going to the equally-glamorous surroundings of Southampton Solent University for the DUG/ EUUG conference later this week.  Provided all works OK with the laptop (the website assures me that the hotel has wireless networking) I’m planning to blog from there.

That does, of course, partly depend on what SirsiDynix have in store for us. I’m hoping for an announcement that they are going to fall in with the US and give us a UK version of Horizon 7.4.2 with HIP 3.09. That may make us more likely to sign up for SirsiDynix Enterprise when it is released, and would be a more persuasive approach to getting their Horizon customers to consider Symphony…..

The other aspect of the conference will be the merger of DUG and EUUG to form a single user group for SD customers. I think everybody involved is a bit cautious about this due to the very different cultures of the 2 groups. But on the other hand it doesn’t make sense to stay separate as we’re dealing with the same company. All will become clearer by the end of the week - including the new name, always the most difficult thing to decide!

I’m quite impressed with the speed with which the JISC/ SCONUL LMS report has been published. It only seems the other day since I was filling in the survey along with our Head of Learning Support. I’ve not had chance to read it in the detail it deserves, but it does a good job of pointing out the pressures on HE libraries at the moment, and makes recommendations for where we should go next. As a JISC sponsored report it is noticeable that the role of JISC in the recommendations is prominent.

However there are contradictions: we are recommended to delay decisions on changing LMS, but we are also recommended to do all we can to integrate the LMS into the institutional IT infrastructure. I know that Talis have worked on this, but most LMS I’ve looked at would need considerable behind-the-scenes effort to integrate with VLEs, financial and student systems - it doesn’t come out of the box. A good Systems Librarian has those skills, but some smaller libraries can’t afford to pay anyone to do this work.

Although there’s an interview with Stephen Abrams of SirsiDynix, it also misses the point that those of us on Horizon don’t have the luxury of being able to sit back and wait for events to pan out. The future of our system seems even more limited in Europe than it is in the US, so most of us are being forced to migrate sometime in the next few years. SirsiDynix would like this to be to Symphony, but the report does a good job of pointing out the criteria we need to be using. Hence each institution will make its own choice whether Symphony is the best match for its needs in the future.

Nor am I convinced by the rush to SaaS (Software As A Service) which Stephen mentions, as it again restricts that integration which the report highlights. Possibly one of the things which comes out of the report is the nature of the UK HE LMS market, in that our needs are not the same as other market sectors. Suppliers who can cater for this are more likely to get what business comes out of the sector in the next few years.

There’s a fascinating story on the BBC website today about a recent student survey done by the Dept for Innovation, Universities and Skills. A series of ’student juries’ were asked for their views on University life, and not surprisingly fees came out as one of the main concerns. They were understandably worried about graduating with an average debt of £12,000. Typical new Labour phrases such as ‘Value for Money’, ‘Transparency’, ‘Guaranteed levels of service’ were used, as you’d expect from a generation of 18-21 year olds who probably don’t even remember the previous government. There was even a suggestion that arts undergraduates should pay less than science undergrads because they have less teaching time and need less resources (which would make for a very interesting fees structure not to say economic impact).

All of these ideas were predicted a few years back when fees were brought in, but were ignored at the time by the decision-makers. It makes for a very dynamic and potentially litigious HE market. In theory those universities which can demonstrate good ‘vfm’ (to use the jargon) will come out the winners. But this is something of a two-edged sword. It doesn’t account for the importance of image - BMW thrive in the car market through having a superior image to their struggling rivals such as Ford but not necessarily superior real quality. In the same way those Universities such as Oxford and Cambridge can continue to cost more in real terms because their graduates are happy to pay extra for the cachet of an Oxbridge degree. They therefore remain viable despite possibly more ‘relaxed’ ways, but the establishments without such image are the ones who struggle. Ironically it may lead to the Universities in the low to middle range who can demonstrate ‘accountability’ (jargon again) being the sufferers?

News emerged at the weekend of further job losses at the US SirsiDynix offices. Some of the names affected were long-standing support staff who are well known to the customers and held in high regard. Fortunately I’m not aware of any layoffs in the UK office (most of the staff who have gone from there have left of their own accord) but this is another indicator of the worrying situation for we Horizon users.

 Although few customers have yet migrated from Horizon, it appears SirsiDynix are already cutting support for the system. I don’t think an end of life date for Horizon has been announced yet, but it is clear that SirsiDynix are putting the minimum of resources into maintaining it. Combined with the decision not to put resources into allowing non-US customers to have Horizon 7.4.1 this indicates that we are to be ‘encouraged’ to move to another system by steadily reducing support for our existing system.

As a policy this is interesting. SirsiDynix need to cut costs from maintaining 2 large systems, so they obviously need to encourage us to migrate. We’ve been made some very attractive offers to move to Symphony, which other suppliers will find hard to match. However if the decision to look for a new LMS has been forced by low support I would find it difficult to recommend wholeheartedly to my managers that we move to another system from the same suppliers without going out to tender, which SirsiDynix are keen to persuade us not to do. Certainly the reaction of the Horizon email list has been overwhelmingly negative to the news of the job losses and what they may indicate, so this might be the view taken by other libraries. The LMS market continues to be uncertain.

Higher Education is once more the subject of media debate. The implications of the Leitch Report are still bubbling away (I still don’t understand why it never made headline news). There was debate in the Observer about the role of Higher Education. And now the government has announced that it wants another 20 new campuses.

The UK government seems to view the primary role of any form of education as being its contribution to the economy - replacing Blair’s ‘Education, education, education’ with ‘Skills, skills, skills’. There seems to be some recognition of its other contributions, such as greater appreciation of the arts, increased open-mindedness, and possibly an enhanced quality of life, but this is secondary. Acting as devil’s advocate, who is to say this is wrong? Labour is more expensive in the West, therefore maybe to capitalise on a more skilled workforce is the best way for the UK to survive in the future?

But as someone who works in UK HE I’m more interested in the implications for my role and the institution I work in. Another 20 campuses sounds like good news as it means expansion - although I have to be cautious here as expansion has been attempted before in other sectors without sufficient investment. It also means a continuation of the change of focus from academe to a more business-oriented environment. Courses and research must be more commercially focussed, and students must be attracted to do these courses. The days when the ‘new universities’ (ie the former polytechnics) were the most flexible at meeting these needs are long gone, so competition between universities will continue to increase.

The role of the information providers also continues to change. Twenty new campuses won’t be able to build 20 large new university libraries: rather there will be a demand for focussed information at the point of need. We have the challenge of finding the best way to achieve this. ‘Best’, in this climate, means the most educationally and financially effective way, and the universities which succeed will be the ones that achieve this.

A report has just come out from JISC, Information behaviour of the researcher of the future. The report is an investigation of how user information needs are already changing and likely to continue to change over the next few years. ‘Researcher’ is used in its broadest sense as seeker of knowledge rather than as a postgraduate researcher.

Most summaries of the report have seized on its conclusion that although the ‘Google generation’ (ie people born after 1993) are used to using the Internet, their information skills are not high. They give the example of the use of a natural language phrase in a query box (eg ‘What are the 3 most common crimes in Southern California?’). At present the computer has a big challenge to understand what is needed here (librarians would see this as the reference interview). Helping users to improve these skills is an obvious role for librarians and is something we have already identified (although as in psychiatry getting a user to realise they have a need is the primary challenge!).

Maybe we have to look back at human nature. These people seek for information horizontally and in a shallow way - isn’t this a typical human trait? They exhibit the universal tendency to try to expend as little effort as possible on something they don’t enjoy. Rather than teaching them how to use computer systems more effectively we should instead be making the computer systems more effective at answering their queries. Google already spends millions on this every year. Products such as Primo, Encore and Aquabrowser help libraries to deliver it. But Librarians, because we are (or most of us!) expert searchers, do have a tendency to complicate.

Because users are put off by apparent complexity, we shouldn’t be assuming that they already have the information skills to distinguish between the different searches we offer, eg. an ejournal search and a database search. Although we are very customer-focussed in some ways (eg opening hours), we remain content-focussed in others. The report talks of an ‘outcome focus’ , ie that the user’s information need is resolved as effectively as possible. Effectiveness from the point of view of the user includes ease and speed, as well as appropriateness of response, ie the correct level of depth of response. Getting to this ‘holy grail’ involves cooperation of all types of people including the computer experts and the librarians.

My apologies to Kathryn Harnish and to Ex Libris. I should have checked my vague memories before typing anything! Even more embarassing as we are happy SFX and Metalib customers!

Two pieces of important news came out about ILS at the end of last week. One is relevant to anyone involved with Library Systems, the other only to those of using Horizon.

The first was the results of Marshall Breeding’s ILS survey I must admit to not being greatly surprised by most of the overall results. Librarians are detail people so it was inevitable that no system would come out as perfect. Innovative came out of it fairly well, which backs up my impression that they rate customer support as a priority. Ex Libris position is interesting: they have the ‘Voyager’ problem where they have announced their decision to discontinue the system after the takeover of Endeavour and so they have a considerable number of customers forced into a migration they hadn’t planned for. The position of Aleph is unusual. It gets some widely divergent votes which suggests to me that it is one of those systems that reflects what you put into it, functionally rich but demanding quite a lot of technical input to get the best out of it (which not all libraries have).

Dave Pattern rightly quotes the paragraph about SirsiDynix. They suffer badly because Horizon customers feel very let-down about the switch to Symphony (similar to Voyager above). Even the Unicorn customers don’t seem to have much trust in the company. Dave highlights Scribe’s suggestion that maybe SD are happy to lose a substantial part of their customer base simply because they don’t have the level of staffing required to migrate and support them. This might be supported by the UK position: the SD UK office aren’t keen to let Horizon customers move to Horizon 7.4/ HIP 3.09 which are being offered in the US, and we’ve wondered whether this is because they simply don’t have the remaining Horizon expertise to support this. The SD argument is that they don’t want to spend staffing resource on a legacy system, but as many of us will be on that legacy system for some years we’d rather our money went on something we would use rather than a system we’re not yet committed to migrating to.  SD’s acceptable customer loss level was talked about amongst the delegates at CODI.

Ironically the top system for customer satisfaction in Breeding’s survey is Polaris, which was the topic of the other announcement I wanted to mention. This was Ouachita Parish Public Library’s announcement that they’ve decided to move to Polaris from Horizon. This is significant because it is the library run by Eileen Kontrowitz, the CODI Past President. Eileen is very highly influential in the Horizon community (not least because she has strong views and is prepared to speak out to defend them). SD didn’t bid, largely because Symphony runs on either ISAM or Oracle, neither of which was an option for Ouachita. Eileen is one of those opinion-formers the sociologists talk about, and her loss to the Horizon community will in turn be a loss to SD.

The survey shows that the ILS world isn’t a ‘happy place’ (I use that phrase deliberately) to be at the moment. There’s a lot of frustration pent up there and I’m not sure all the suppliers recognise it. Maybe some are even relying on the tendency that increasing satisfaction raises costs? A supplier who delivered the products and reliability that customers want, along with the support to back it up, could make substantial inroads into the market. But ILS are so expensive that this would be a comparatively long-term move, and ‘long-term’ isn’t a phrase which tends to interest venture capitalists.

The parcel I grumbled about has finally arrived. It was promised for 24th December and finally delivered on 2nd January. And I’ve had an apology from Amazon about what has happened which puts me into a slightly more positive frame of mind.

However my points remain: although online ordering is very convenient and (sometimes) cheaper, the customer now bears the risk of the delivery as well, which isn’t good when you have a deadline (such as Christmas). Current delivery methods are flawed (and here I’m talking generally not just about Amazon) so some element of failure is built into the system, and I was the one who suffered this time. Perhaps only when downloading (of books as well as music) becomes the generally accepted method of transmission this may be solved……..