About 26 libraries are here. University of Tasmania are the organisers and drivers. They had three staff in the USA last year conducting an environmental scan (I'll make Rod Foley's reports available on the intranet - very interesting reading). One thing that strikes you immediately is the difference in resourcing between US and Australian libraries. One University with around the same number EFTSUs as JCU has 185 employees (with 11 dedicated to library IT).
As Di Worth said in opening the unconference, 'we won't come away with the answer' but I already feel that I have a much clearer handle on what the question is. Linda Luther asked the question 'What is an ILS really for?'
The proprietary vendors of ILS are surprisingly few in number (at least those in the University sector) and even more surprising is how old their offerings are; Endeavour is the youngest and first released in 1995. All the products have evolved but you wonder about the core assumptions in their initial design when the most recent was released the same year as Netscape 1.0
Warwick Cathro outlined the NLA's experience with OSS but focused mostly on the directions they are taking in evaluating the multitude of systems they have think about Service Oriented Architectures.
Ex Libris then presented their ILS and product suite and answered questions about migration paths. They stress their position as an innovator and Unified Resource Management (URM) was discussed as their next generation discovery layer.
Then it was off to the library staff room for welcome drinks and nibbles - nice couches well laid out kitchen and servery, and facing an atrium full of barwangs - better laid out than Cairns but doesn't have our view!
Open Source software has been bandied around a bit, Anthony Hornby had a very pragmatic overview of how you should approach Open Source - the same way you approach proprietary software - evaluate for best fit. He dispelled a bunch of myths about OSS, from the wildly evangelical to the demonising (and showed us the little funny below).
Anthony pointed out that even proprietary vendors relied on OSS (e.g. Java), and that we all use it every day (thing blogs like this one, or IM).
We were given overviews of Koha and Evergreen by brave souls who've installed and played with it in test environments (common theme: follow the installation instructions meticulously).
HES then presented, offering the group tools for future collaboration and collective action. JCU participates in HES for a number of systems e.g. our HR system, and we benefit from the negotiated agreement with Oracle.
Next was Serials Solutions, which held little new for me, until Summon got a mention, which is sort a competitor for URM but much closer to implementation. Basically it operates more like Google Scholar in that databases are harvested for metadata, removing federated search's Achille's heel; connection files and retrieval times. SS benefit from being part of the Cambridge Information Group which includes Proquest, Bowker and Ulrich's. Apparently they have an agreement with Thomson Gale to allow harvesting of the databases and many other larger publisher are either on board or soon will be.
SirsiDynix then made their presentation, revolving around Symphony, which looked quite cool. I admire SD staff, they've had so much flack from customers since the Horizon 8 death notice but they are still cheerfully plugging away. The word going around is that SD are focusing on the international market, and rumour says that's because the customer response to H8's death in the US was so vitriolic - but it might also have something to with it's ability to handle unicode making it usable in Asia.
Softlink (Liberty) then presented - they chiefly work in the specials and small publics sector and don't have any university customers in Australia.
The breaks are full of conversations between people asking each other 'what are you going to do?'
Friday we have LibaryThing, DA, Civica and Innovative Interfaces, before another all in library only session to finish up.
Most of the powerpoints will be made available, and I will be writing a more detailed report after cogitating a bit. I think this is a good time to think about our ILS as we are thinking a lot right now about how we do resource discovery with the CMS and 360 Search being launched in the last week and a bit of January (my blonde tips are getting bigger).
Another thing Anthony Hornby had in his powerpoint really tickled me - I think I'll make it my family crest:
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