It’s interesting … as people become more and more used to computers – and especially the web – their expectations rise.  What used to be a miracle becomes normal; what was a minor flaw becomes a major gripe.

As Paul Simon put it in his song The Boy in the Bubble, “These are the days of miracle and wonder.”  We have come to expect miracles. 

I mention this because the library’s automated catalog and circulation system has its, ah, flaws.  The vendor is slowly chipping away at them, correcting the easy ones by writing new code patches and figuring out which major ones can be addressed in the new “releases” we get every few months.

Not all libraries have the same problems, especially not libraries which “stand alone” and do not share their software with other libraries in a consortium.  The reason is simple … the computer code need only consider one set of local rules such as “item types” or “circulation period.”   

There are 23 public libraries in our consortium.  There are thus 23 sets of rules to consider when the computer is matching an item in the shared catalog with the library which is actually circulating it (or putting it on hold).  It gets complicated. 

Those of you who are familiar with programming will appreciate that there is a substantial “legacy code” issue.

Also, as the library market isn’t very big – leastways not as major software vendors measure markets – none of the vendors have huge resources.  Things change for the better, but slowly and unevenly.  As a fellow library director once put it, six months after installing a new automation system the best system will be something else.

That said, some might think that leaving a consortium – and thus having a computer that need consider a far simpler set of rules – would be an answer.  Yes, it would … but to the wrong problem.  It fixes the “circulation” problems that occasionally vex us, but it vastly complicates the “sharing materials” problem which belonging to a large consortium makes invisible.

If the copies of a book we own are out the next available copy will come from another library, automatically.  If another consortium member library has a book we do not own it can be “interlibrary loaned” with a few keystrokes and will probably arrive within two days.  

The users of “stand alone” libraries do not have access to these particular miracles.

Bob Watson
Director