Why my job is so hard
Lorcan Dempsey has a great post about how network are reshaping the library systems environment. Lorcan does a terrific job of describing the evolution of things and paints and interesting picture of where we might be going. What interests me the most about the article is his discussion of the need for unified access to the libraries collection that matches the users preferences . In my opinion, making this happen is the crux of my job.
So Lorcan warms my heart beyond words when he says “This is one reason for the difficulties with the library website. Effectively, it is a layer stretched over a set of systems and services which were not designed as a unit. Indeed, in many cases, they were not originally designed to work on the web at all.” Explaining this problem to administration and other non-systems folk is sometimes daunting. It isn’t that we don’t want to create a unified looking/feeling/functioning system, it is that stitching together the pieces is exceptionally difficult.
One thing that makes it difficult is the level of knowledge about different types of library systems that the Web Head has to bring to the table. I’m very fortunate in that in my first job I got a very mixed bag of systems skills. In addition to running the web site, I also was in charge of electronic resources and ran the Open URL resolver. I also did a six month stint running the ILS when our systems librarian was on sabbatical and was in charge of maintaining the OPAC (god I hate that word). Lastly, I ran our Interlibrary Loan system. This combined with an internship in original cataloging has given me a tremendous knowledge base to draw upon when working to tie together disparate systems. Without this background I’m not sure I would understand the conversation, let alone know the right questions to ask.
Being the Web Head also means dealing with lots of different groups of people in addition to the diversity of systems. This piece of the puzzle can be even more challenging because of all the different things people bring to the table. Dealing with all these concerns is an incredible balancing act that I’m not sure how I or any other Web Head pulls off. But challenging as this is, someone has to try to do this because library users want a unified library experience.
One of the things that in my opinion further complicates matters is that our systems, apart from not being made for the web, are very often not made with the end user in mind. The catalogue is one of our main tools – that does not make it a good system for everyone else.
But I agree – the lack of a truly unified interface is a huge problem. And one that it is difficult to solve as long as there are multiple commercial players involved.
omg it’s like you read my mind! i keep trying to explain to the administration that it is not as simple as doing a website “redesign”, we have to seamlessly integrate all our online services (and get the rest of our services online to begin with!) they just don’t seem to get it. i even talked about what i wish our “virtual branch” could be like in a blog post (http://theinfobabe.blogspot.com/2007/05/i-dreamed-dream.html)… unfortunately i don’t have your technical background, so it’s hard for me to know how much of what i want is even possible…
I have always tried to explain it this way: it is very complicated to make things simple. There is a zero sum game to complexity, and in order to make things simple for the users, what we are doing is absorbing the complexity ourselves.
Not only are products not designed to be integrated, sometimes it’s as if vendors imaginge theirs is the only product in the world, and actively discurage their product “touching” their competetors product! “What you would want to link to an article that isn’t published by us?!”
We as systems personnel work to analyze the requirements, the system and how it works, what we can do with it, and how to best setup the functionality so that the staff can use it in the best manner. The work that goes into this can be quite complex at times, and given no other systems personnel are in the library… My systems colleagues are on listservs and webpages.