Proof that it's the end of the semester

In our online Moodle discussions, we were told to look for "new and provocative" articles about library/information science technology. If this doesn't make my dismay with the class clear, then I didn't have enough fun with this entry...

Citation

Kinner, Laura and Rigda, Christine "The Integrated Library System: From Daring to Dinosaur?", Journal of Library Administration, 49: 4, 401 — 417.

Summary

The Automated Library System (ALS) came about in the 1970s as a way to house and retrieve library holdings. Since then, it has become an Integrated Library System (ILS) which is apparently much nicer (at least that's what its mother tells it when all the other kids on the playground make fun of it). With the rise of the internet and open source, we might see a battle royale occur between dinosaurs and librarians.

• At some point in time someone asked "wouldn't it be nice if the public had access to the databases the librarians had access to?" The answer, of course, was a resounding "No." However, that didn't stop someone from coming up with OPAC since they argued that if the public could do their own searching, they wouldn't bother us librarians and dinosaurs as much. Thus began the schism between librarians and dinosaurs since the dinosaurs liked it when people bothered them because it meant that there was more human meat to make into sandwiches the next morning.
• If OPAC didn't make the 1980s bad enough, the 1990s brought ILS along with grunge bands from the Pacific Northwest. ILS was originally meant to be another back end tool, mainly designed to perform acquisitions
  and circulation functions. Later in the 1990s when fashion ran out of ideas and within the same year, everyone wore bellbottoms, then carpenter pants then cigarette pants, MARC was added. MARC was a very simple kid and preferred straight-leg jeans. Everyone made fun of him because he was so simple to use.
• With the millennium, everyone got so lazy that the end of the world was moved from the year 2000 to 2012. The year 2006 witnessed even more mergers of ILS companies since it was much easier for a collected bunch of companies to come up with one Integrated Library System than for a bunch of separate companies to come up with a bunch of Integrated Library Systems.
• One of these was WebOpac because "Son of OPAC" sounded silly.
• After the big ILS wars, the librarians and dinosaurs were too tired to keep fighting. This provided Open Source programs like Koha, Sakai,  Evergreen and Prospero an opening.
• The conclusion the author comes to is that librarians must never forget the hard lessons of the war and must adapt to new technology and the demands of patrons in the future.

Response

I really liked this article. It covers the oft-missed topic of librarians versus dinosaurs in an engaging and thoughtful way.