Eric Schnell Wonders Will the Next Generation of Library Systems be Customer Generated?
It’s no wonder that library systems of tomorrow are really just library systems of yesterday. It seems to me that as a profession we are stuck in a bad relationship with our systems and vendors. We just can’t figure out a way to get out of it. Are we happy that III will not give us APIs? Are we so insecure with our relationship with them that we are content to take what they give us? Do we feel we are that powerless?
Sure, but it will still be an entire generation behind
As I started working with the back end of library systems over the past year or so it became more and more apparent just how outdated and near useless many of these systems are. The concept of user interface testing seems beyond most of the vendors and lacking in features that were long since standard in other software packages not used in libraries. So yes, the next generation of systems may be more customer generated but all that will mean is that they will have the features that most websites have today…just five years from now.