Publications

From the Introduction: 

It’s an interesting time to be writing an issue devoted to RFID. So much has changed for libraries in the last decade. Ten years ago, it seemed like RFID was poised to take off and become a standard piece of library technology. But standards were slow to develop, and e-books were not. While libraries waited for RFID standards to develop, the iPad and Kindle emerged. As a result, libraries are struggling more with DRM, discovery interfaces, and patron authentication systems than with new technologies focused on their physical material.

Presentation for Back in Circulation Conference Again held at University of Wisconsin-Madison. This updated session on trends in materials handling technology began with an historical look at how current technologies have evolved. The Speaker's Notes and Slides handout below provides speaker's notes and lots of images of state-of-the art products plus links to useful resources for getting more info.

Speakers Notes and Slides

Debut "Technology Matters" column for Collaborative Librarianship. This article, Holding Your Vendor's Fee to the Fire, talks about the importance of standards in library technology and encourages libraries to be more demanding about the importance of adherence to those standards.

The article begins like this:

"The nut. The bolt. When you go to the hard-ware store with a bolt in hand, you probably feel pretty confident that you’ll be able to find the nut you need to tighten that bolt. When I hand over my bolt to my local Rex Ace Hardware man, he strides down a nearby aisle and within seconds, I’ve got my bolt’s mate. It screws on perfectly. Do I care who made the bolt or the nut? I do not. This is because nuts and bolts have standard on sizes and threads. Any quar-ter inch nut will screw onto any quarter inch bolt.

Infopeople webinar highlighting the trends in materials handling including:

1. Pricing of AMH systems going down
2. Quality of AMH systems going up
3. Automated check-in with sorting becoming standard
4. Kiosks a hit but still a tad buggy

Lots of info about automated check-in systems, small sorters, advancements in sefl-check-in technology, kiosks and dispensers and new AMH products entering the market.

This white paper identifies the key benefits of sharing a library system in the context of today’s technological environment. The benefits include cost savings, improved resource-sharing opportunities, providing a higher quality system staff, improving the quality of the collection, streamlining library workflows, optimizing the patron experience, eliminating routing slips and pre-sorting, and adding value to the consortial affiliation.

This was a joint presentation with Henry Bankhead of Los Gatos Public Library, Kevin Pischke of William Jessup University, Scott Hines of Palo Alto University, and Deborah Lipoma of Santa Cruz Public Library. I began with an overview of the ILS and Open Source ILS marketplace.  Then, each presenter talked about their own benefits and challenges along the way to moving to Koha or Evergreen. Finally, each presenter provided some useful procurement tips.

Joint presentation with John Thill of Napa City-County Library. I provided an overview of the Open Source ILS marketplace and John covered new developments on the proprietary side.

On January 27th, representatives from Arcadia and Los Gatos libraries participated in the Edgy Librarian online conference. The archive is, unfortunately, only available to participants who paid (and presumably already saw the program).  

For the program, we did an "Open Source - Open Libraries Update" in which I interviewed the two people from each library who have been most intimately involved in their library's migration to Koha.  

Slides from my lightning round at KUDOS Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The presentation is an entertaining (I hope) history lesson on how Koha came to be and how it changed everything. Trying to give some props to those brave souls that got us going on the open source ILS trajectory!

This article is the culmination of my three year project with the Massachusetts regions as it pertains to their delivery operations. The paper presents important aspects and issues related to the merging of six regional library delivery services in a single statewide system that serves more than 550 libraries, that together circulate more than 15 million items annually throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The purpose of marrying the six distinct systems was to reduce redundancies and incorporate innovative features to improve library processing efficiency. Most libraries are members of one of nine separate shared integrated library systems. The paper covers the background, objectives, benefits, issues, lessons learned, and a successful request for proposal procurement process for this complex project.