At 12:57 PM 05/15/2008, David wrote:
>. . .
>Of course, empowering developers, or their customers in general, is not
>in the III business model, so I don't think we can expect much from
>them.


I think that III is very much into empowering their customers, but
their customers are libraries, and the bulk of Innovative libraries
don't have access to developers, and may not actually need any of the
enhancements that a talented developer might provide.  To most III
libraries, customer empowerment comes in the form of being relieved
of having to worry about the nuts and bolts management aspects of the
ILS so we can concentrate on providing good services to library
users.  The III turnkey systems that are derided by coders/developers
actually make a lot of sense to libraries that have no real systems
staff.  And to many of those libraries it makes more sense for III to
spend development efforts on tools that address a specific need than
to spend it on general purpose tools that require someone with the
imagination and creativity to put them to good use.  If you don't
know how to cook and you can't hire someone who does, that hot dog
cooker comes in pretty darn handy when all you want is hot dogs.

Note that there are things about the III system that drive me nuts,
an SOA model would be nice, and I understand the frustration that
folks on a list like this feel when they come up against the closed
aspects of a III turnkey arrangement.  But if you're a
coder/developer who feels constrained by it and/or the system's lack
of interoperability with other tools, might I suggest that the bad
guy is not III, but whomever signed on the dotted line to purchase a
system that doesn't meet the needs of your library.

Bob Duncan


~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~
Robert E. Duncan
Systems Librarian
Editor of IT Communications
Lafayette College
Easton, PA  18042
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http://www.library.lafayette.edu/