LCF – Collaborating Internationally to Leap Forward

Collaborative Librarianship has published its first issue of 2013. It looks like a great issue with an editorial by our editor, Ivan Gaetz, entitled "Compelling and Necessary Momentum: A Recent Timeline in Open Access" and an articlbe about Orbis-Cascade Alliance's selection of Alma for their shared library system as just one piece of their merging services.

My column, Technology Matters, talks about the Library Communication Framework. It starts like this...

Call for Open Source ILS Communities to Support the Library Communication Framework (LCF)

 I have just returned from the UK, where I spoke at the RFID in Libraries Conference.  While there, I met with representatives from the Book Industry Communications (BIC) and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) as well as RFID vendors. BIC and CILIP are two UK entities roughly equivalent (very roughly) to the BISG (Book Industry Study Group) and ALA.

Holding Your Vendor's Feet to the Fire

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.

SIP 3.0 Ready for Implementation

SIP3 has just been released and it provides many new messages which means communication between ILS/LMS and your self-check, sorters, security system, PC management system....will be easier to implement and you'll have more options.  That is IF your ILS vendor supports it!  

So, make sure you start adding a requirement for SIP3 support to your procurement documents.

Here's what's new:

  • allow creation / registration of patrons from self-service devices
  • allow patrons to update their PINs / Passwords from a self-service device in the library
  • allow patrons to update their home addresses and phone numbers
  • support for handling electronic resources
  • support for staff overrides on self-service circulation
  • support for sortation systems
  • support for PC Management systems
  • added some other new messages simplify implementation and clarify usage
  • added Undo Checkout and Undo Check-in messages to simplify implementation. It has been confusing for many developers to send a Check-in w/cancel flag to cancel a Checkout and send a Checkout w/cancel flag to cancel a Check-in. This was confounded by the fact that many ILS vendors did not support cancelling a transaction and would then proceed as a standard check-in (if cancelling a checkout) causing the patron to be removed from the hold list.
  • added Off-line Checkout and Off-line Check-in messages to support off-line processing
  • added Unsupported Message Response to indicate that the message request is not supported by the library system
  • added Grouped data.  Data can now be grouped to provide all information required for a specific event. For example, a fee consists of the following fields: fee identifier, currency code, fee amount, and fee type. These fields can now be grouped together to simplify the passing of multiple fees on a single request or response message. Each set of group data starts with a group identifier and ends with a group end field.

RFID and SIP – Potential for Big Improvements for Libraries

Mick Fortune, of  RFID-Changing Libraries for Good fame notes that the new data model standard released by ISO just a few weeks ago (ISO 28560) “presents both a threat and an opportunity for suppliers. The threat is obvious. Up until now it has proved too difficult for most libraries to switch suppliers once they have purchased an RFID solution.” With the potential for interoperability between RFID systems, the library RFID marketplace may soon face competition.