I have several vendors I seriously heart, but I’m almost dizzy at the experience I had with our new search engine vendor this morning. I must be hallucinating some of the things I heard… (Technical note: they are handling most of the implementation, as my CMS folk are not search people. We’re doing it as a kind of appliance, versus entangling the code too deeply into our CMS–so that if we divorce one or the other it’s easier to divide the goods.)
“508 compliance is very important” (This was not a response to a question; this was a statement–I think almost a suggestion to ME, like “girl, don’t you know from compliance?”)
“We believe in doing many iterations” (after a vendor whose attitude was “here it is, now go copulate yourself”)
“We’d really like your feedback” and then–this is where I needed smelling salts–“any way you want to provide it is fine”
“We really like CSS,” followed by an explanation of how they use it…
After I apologized for the mortifying muck of HTML/CSS left by a previous vendor (which we patched our way through and soldiered on), I heard a modest chuckle, followed by “you should see our code” (Compared to that vendor, their code is gold-standard)
“There’s some really great things you can do with your data,” followed by… really great ideas. Some involving tagging, which we all agreed was a good phase 2 goal.
Oh, tagging, I said, but we’d have to do authentication.
Oh, we do that ourselves, they said.
Ok, now I must marry all of them. In a big group wedding.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Would You Pay $25 to See Me? - 2005
- Banned Books Bracelets - 2005
You deserve a martini…
I hate to say it, FRL, but I think the experience you describe is what can often be found outside the library vendor community. I’m increasingly convinced that the library vendor community is a small backwater of the real show and it often reflects that environment by being provincial and patronizing. But if libraries start leaping out of the wading pool into the ocean by hiring folks like Siderean and Endeca instead of [insert your most hated library vendor here], we may see some change.
Alas, it’s only mid-afternoon, John, but after the annual report, the trip to the Y, and dinner… Though I do like the idea of an early-morning martini.
Roy, an interesting question is how much of the ILS we need/want an ILS vendor to provide.
I have to disagree on a micro level with Roy. MPOW’s last web redesign was done by an organization which had only done businesses, and had no library experience. What they orginially gave us was a piece of crap which was unworkable. We could only edit from outside the building (for instance). We could not edit most of the template, etc. For web design, it is the LAST time I use someone who does not understand libraries, and the importance of librarians being able to control their own content. I probably should stick (for web design) with the architect analogy. For a library building project I would not take an architect without library experience, and the web design is the same situation.
Well, I’m going to agree and disagree with Michael and Roy. I have bad experiences with non-library vendors, including a huge educational nonprofit that didn’t know its fanny from a hole in the wall. I’ve also had great experiences with non-library vendors. I have found that I need luck, good consultants, really clear deliverables, and the discipline to get down and dirty with the vendor selection process. I still think you can’t discount luck.
Michael, in the case of the website, I don’t buy the library-architecture argument. (I do believe library architects are usually important for library building projects.) A website requirement that the client can easily edit all files and templates is fairly universal. You may be able to communicate better with a librarian, or feel more in control with a web designer with an MLS, or it’s possible that a librarian will be able to intuit requirements and willing to act on those intuitions, but “the importance of [clients] to control their own content” is nearly universal in this kind of project.
ILS vendors are bad in part because we made them bad. I loved Joe Janes and Stephen Abrams talking about how we made Dialog so awful. It’s like when people complain about the ALA event planner and people pipe up that the real problem with it is that it doesn’t have authority control. These are the moments when I fear for my profession.