News from OCLC

Just when I thought things were returning to the normal calm, OCLC have stirred them up again.  A press release announces that they are planning a web-scale library management system. I’d never really figured out Worldcat local, as it seemed  a duplication of what most of us already have available, but as the first part of an LMS it makes perfect sense: the catalogue is the first thing most users see, and the second part is circulation, which is what OCLC are working on at the moment and hope to be testing this summer. The complexity and cost of many LMS are beyond what many libraries need, and if they are members of OCLC already I can imagine the announcement being of great interest. It complements OS nicely, as somewhere to go for those libraries who can’t afford or justify the expense of local support. One to watch with interest!

Twitter

As someone who never uses one word where 160 would do, I’ve never been convinced by Twitter. But now I am.

Sun again

For IBM read Oracle.  IBM’s bid to buy Sun that  I blogged about a while back fell through and it has now been announced that Oracle is to buy them instead. A more natural match in my view, for what its worth.  A lot of Oracle systems already run on Sun hardware and both are industry standards for high quality.  There must still be concerns for rival companies like Sybase, many of whose systems also run on Sun hardware,  as well as the Open Source alternatives, however.

Swan stops traffic

Just driven into work, as usual with the radio on. At this time it is normally interrupted by traffic warnings, but one was a little different. Traffic entering and leaving Shrewsbury by the English Bridge was beng warned that it might be delayed by a large swan (I did wonder whether the swan wasn’t very good at directing the traffic…).  It’s good to be reminded occasionally that the word is bigger than the office!

IBM to buy Sun?

According to the BBC news website IBM have been in talks to takeover Sun. This is a real sign of the financial slowdown – at one time Sun were making massive profits, and it has long been one of the technological leaders in the IT industry.  To be taken over by IBM would probably lead to big changes as both companies overlap in big sectors of the market. I wonder what would happen to Solaris, Sun’s version of Unix? Or even to Java? I think Sun also has big stakes in MySQL and PostgreSQL, the 2 core OS DDBMS – would IBM choose to continue this when it might take sales from IBM’s own DB2? Another story to watch with interest….