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Day two at NISO has been as intense as day one with a lot of information to digest within just one day. Everybody was pretty relaxed (and exhausted) and comfortable with each other as we all got well acquainted the day before. Today’s talk was much about collaborative work and consortial partnership. Vendors believe that by adhering a consortium, libraries could put their voices together to acquire resources. Doing so will significantly reduce cost for each member of the consortium.

The most exciting part of the day was when we were divided into groups to discuss what libraries want in Library Resource Management Systems. We also answered interesting questions that we shared with the whole conference. Below are some of the question and the answers we came up with:

  1. What did your group talk most about?
    • Talked a lot about ILS and discovery tools
    1. In the area, which features are needed?
    • Standards and interoperability and real time sharing of data
    • Need to be able to input and output data from ILS to other systems like patron info, financial info
    • Getting data out is not difficult but functionalities like patron renewal needs some work
    • Interoperability is very important and when you talk about different products it does not make sense to people
    • Need to have our system authenticate with other systems.
    • Would be interested in something like a data warehouse that would house all library data resources around which other systems would revolve.
    • The ability to get data in/out through API based on standard and interoperability
    • We don’t know if it is any cheaper to join consortiums like WorldCat local
    • Would like vendors to open up their product a little bit more to the customers
    • Need for systems to talk to each other.
    1. Name one specific bottleneck in the area. What is causing the problems in getting work done, in training people? What is the one thing holding you back?
    • The proprietary system is a big bottleneck in this area that is holding back

    It was a good feeling when my group selected me to be the note taker and the speaker of the group as each group was asked to make this selection.

    Just like yesterday, I have a lot of information to share and don’t be surprised to see more posts coming your way during the weekend. I now have to go catch a flight back home.