Let me give this some thought as I believe this could be helpful and
appreciate such information myself.

I don't work for OCLC or Ex Libris, but I have personal and professional
relationships at both that are important to me and wouldn't want a poorly
expressed sentiment to convey the wrong impression -- I feel lucky to have
had the opportunity work as closely with both as I have.

To provide an analogy a lot of people here would relate to, Bepress,
CONTENTdm, DSpace, and Omeka all can be used to store and serve just about
anything. But when you look at what's in their DNA, Bepress is a publishing
platform for textual documents, CONTENTdm is a centralized image
repository, DSpace is a community based document store, and Omeka was
designed for online exhibitions. These products are relatively easy to use
when your needs align with what they're designed to do. But as you get
further away from their core purpose, it quickly gets harder to make things
work.

Josh's point about similarities in how WMS and Alma conceive of electronic
resource workflows is highly relevant. When you get right down to it, a
"traditional" ILS is an inventory control system built around the workflows
for managing certain types of physical resources and this model applies
awkwardly to licensed electronic resources. The devil is in the details, so
the question is always what's the best path given what you need in the
short term and anticipate in the medium and long term.

kyle


On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 8:31 AM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]>
 wrote:

> > Nominally, this is true. But these systems look more similar on the
> surface
> than they are so it really does depend on what you need.  A good candidate
> for Alma probably is not a good candidate for WMS and vice versa. The
> reasons for this are better explained in a phone call than an email,
>
> I think a number of us have limited experience with either, and would like
> to hear more, but we aren't all going to call you on the phone. :)
>
> Kyle, if you wanted to write a review/overview, I think it would be very
> well-received. (Assuming you don't work for either vendor, which I don't
> think you do).  Here, on your blog, maybe in the Code4Lib Journal or
> elsewhere, whatever.
>
> These systems are both fairly new, but have both been around long enough
> that some analysis/comparison is possible.  I'd LOVE to see someone who has
> been exposed to both enough to be able to do so (which isn't everyone)
> write a comparative review.
>
> Jonathan
>
>