But you’re absolutely right. Somebody which more than a vague sense that something’s wrong should push this issue, and push it hard.

And, Julian, despite what I just commented on my own blog about not speaking for others, I don’t think you took over anything here. You added some valuable thoughts. I also kind of felt there was an underlying issue and that you didn’t actually devalue spell checking.

I think an ILS vendor even considering charging for spell check is outright criminal! Unfortunately, not in a legalistic sense, but it certainly goes to show that that company is morally bankrupt, in my not so humble opinion.

I certainly appreciate discussion of the front end of our systems. Both for the normal (non-staff) users and also as a primary user of said as an active cataloger. They are abysmal!

But I fully agree with you about the back end also and would love to see more discussion. The things we as Technical Services staff are forced to do just to provide an adequate service to our patrons is ridiculous. I’d love to see some of the ire expressed about costs by the likes of Calhoun directed at our back end systems.

You want catalogers and acquisitions folks to be more productive? Give us some useful tools!

We shouldn’t even have to talk about “front” and “back” ends; they should be two entirely separate systems.

OK, now I’m ranting. I’ll stop. But isn’t it nice to be able to get excitable among friends?

And you’ve hit on two highly important points: the incomprehensible strangeness of ILS vendors who have such immense systems that they have a hard time conceiving of completely starting over with newer technology that actually does what we need it to do, and the problem of the public/private side of our current system.

I’ll come right out and say that right now, my top priority is the public side. I’m a public services librarian, I sit on the Public Access Working Group (we don’t have an ILS forum… we split the working groups into front-end and back-end groups), and we’re embarking on this process to enhance the user experience and the user’s likelihood of getting what he or she needs.

That doesn’t mean that we aren’t concerned about being able to use this thing ourselves. And it certainly doesn’t mean that staff interfaces are fine and dandy. Anything but. It simply means that we want to fully and completely declare that the patron side of things is abysmally bad.

And as to certain unnamed vendors adding spell check as an exorbitantly expensive add-on. I’m right with you. It sure takes the wind out of your sails to think that you could either offer spell check or feed a small country for a year… Hence our desire to look at our options. Maybe it’s time to stand up for our belief that spell check should be standard, not the ILS equivalent of a diamond tiara.

But here I go making grand statements. I’m still not convinced that we’ll see forward movement in the ILS arena, no matter what this glorious “Think Group” comes up with. Still… a girl can hope.

I speak so passionately about the back-end of the ILS because at work, I am part of a forum that deals with the ILS. We spend almost all of our time talking about the public side. Rarely do we talk about the back-end, and I asked to be there specifically to bring balance to the group (to prevent it from being the Public Display Forum).

But here’s the other piece of the puzzle. Part of our meeting was to think about what we wanted out of a catalog, and the other was thinking about the future of information in general. And no matter what we projected and imagined, we aren’t actually programming anything, so even if I thought metadata had outlived its usefulness (which I don’t), we couldn’t do anything about it since all of the systems at our disposal need it.

So I’m left a little confused. I think I’ve participated in a brainstorming group about the future of our catalog, but at the same time most of it felt like science fiction. “Ten years from now students will download texts to their BRAINS…”

So I guess what I’m saying is this: we won’t be building a system, from scratch or otherwise. But we will be thinking hard about our systems and trying to figure out what small, private, Minnesotan colleges need to offer their students and faculty in terms of functionality and funability. Then we’ll figure out what options out there would get as close to that ideal as possible.

Does that answer your question? I’m too tired to figure out if I completely missed the point or not…

This is not meant to nitpick, just as a help to you and the others. You wrote, “…aren’t quite sure about a couple of things (the role of metadata,….” When and if you have time, I’d like to see you flesh that out a bit more, even if only for yourself and the committee, although I’m highly interested in what you come up with.

My point is is there are many kinds of metadata required to do the things you want, including the “typical” MARC records. While this was your 1st meeting I would expect that there is some lack of specifics to the “metadata question.” But, imho, if “you” can’t answer that question then you can’t have any of the other discussions either.

And, clearly, it IS an iterative process. You need some idea of what you want to accomplish so the you know what metadata and services are required to provide the feature. But it seems to me that one of the earliest answers you need is just what role metadata is going to play (again, really several different things there) before you can decide if the feature is doable.

Thus, I’d like to see that statement fleshed out some. I mean, clearly, “you” must have some idea that metadata is critical, you will most likely being using MARC even if it is only to transform it into something else, etc.

And Julian is definitely right about having the backend improved! The gyrations we have to go to to catalog something is completely insane. I have no illusions that acquisitions is any better. In fact, from all I’ve heard it is even worse.

Julian, I kind of understand your being unexcited about shoehorning new features into our current systems, but I honestly cannot understand why you have an issue with spell checking. If you have the time, could you maybe explicate that one a little more in reference to your “overall vision” reference, or any other context you like?

BTW, I fully agree with your “bold statement.” :)

Tagging can be a very powerful complement to traditional classification. Rating and commenting don’t compute in my mind, but they seem to be important to at least a portion of my patrons, so it’s up for consideration. RSS is absolution essential. But none of these work well on top of our current systems (no matter the platform). So where does that leave us? That leaves us with a group charged with thinking about ruminating about planning…

But you’re right. Whatever we think about, it should include better staff experiences (as Steve also reminded me). That’s something that came up today, but didn’t get a whole lot of discussion.

And I’m interested in what this etiquette thing is. I thought the point of a user group was to learn from each other’s experiences and help each other figure out what’s going on with the product.

[And who stole me and put this cranky girl into my skin? I guess it's been a long day.]