|
One of the first booths to be visited was the DRA stand where Taos - the only system built using an object oriented database - was beginning to take shape. UCLA and Harvard are the main prestigious customers won in the last 12 months. I liked the Function Finder concept on the Taos desktop - lists all of the open windows and functions for easy reference. It is hard to keep track sometimes on a multi-document interface - many catalogue records, patron records and so on can be open at once - a good navigation/organizational tool is required and TAOS has one. Talking to staff on the booth I gathered that they can load 300,000 records per hour onto TAOS using a 200 MHz Pentium with 128MB RAM - impressive.
Innovative's Millennium is gradually taking shape. The Java modules were on show for Circulation and the beta version of Serials control - which looks very nice with easy on-screen check-in and claiming. The clear display of expected issues and Innovative's usual functional features were there. Whilst talking to Steve Silberstein he confirmed that Innovative were seriously investigating the move to Oracle as their relational database. This will be no surprise to Azriel Morag of Ex-Libris who predicted last year that pretty soon all systems would be based on relational technology at the server end. No doubt the move to Java clients has prompted this - Oracle8I has many features to assist the integration of distributed clients and the Internet.
For the first time I had a look at
Polaris from Gaylord which has pretty much taken full shape now. Gaylord have gone for the complete Microsoft approach and use SQL Server as their RDBMS now. They have thought hard about standards and are building in Unicode support to their 3 tier client design which should be released with version 1.3 in February. The cataloguing client looks attractive and is using the validation tables from TMQ to check MARC records properly before submitting them to the database. Gaylord plan to move into the academic library market place and this level of cataloguing client will certainly help them.
One of my aims was to look at MARC clients and to get a feel for the general functionality that is out there at the moment.
Leading the pack is probably GeoCAT with superb features for the serious cataloguer. Workfiles for temporary storage of records, spell check, Macros to automate repetitive functions, handling of Unicode, UKMARC and USMARC and handling of ALA character set diacritics are all impressive. No support for Unicode yet though.
More or less level with GeoCAT in many respects is the cataloguing client for Ex-Libris's Aleph which of course handles character sets superbly well. Seeing alternate MARC fields in alternate character sets - Roman, Hebrew, Arabic, Cyrillic is amazing and incalculable in value for the library which has character set problems to face.
At the smaller end of the Market Sirs Mandarin were showing their M3 MARC cataloguing client which, written in C++ and using TMQ's V+ validation, could be incorporated nicely n to systems which do not have this level of cataloguing ready built.
Another focus of interest was to see how the various ILL systems have been progressing since last year when many of them were but gleams in the
eye. ILL systems are mostly but not exclusively based on ISO 10160/61 which defines the rules and protocols by which two systems should talk to each other when administering the details of the loans.
Wings from Pigasus is an entirely Web based product based on the TLC ISO tool kit. Pigasus have extended the ISO standard to provide additional feedback during the various stages of a request. This Extended Request Protocol (ERP) gives Wings better control capabilities according to Art Zemon, vice president. For example when a library sends a request to a remote library (also running Wings), then the remote library will signal back tot he requesting library that the request has been received - the ISO model does not provide for this automatic acknowledgement that is essential for good control according to Zemon. Other similar likely scenarios are catered for by ERP to provide an overall better control of the whole process.
The Relais system from Relais International which has worked hard on the elimination of unnecessary tasks in the administration of ILL requests and has prestigious customers in the shape of the National Library of Medicine where the system administers the 350,000 requests per year from DOCLINE. Relais runs in a Windows 95/NT environment for the workstations with a Web based requesting client. Integrated scanners for efficiency of throughput make Relais particularly suitable where there is a high volume of requests for photocopies (non-loan) items. The autorouting features allow a Relais administrator to set up several library possible suppliers to be tried automatically. Relais is being used within the Amicus system from CGI.
The ILLiad system from Virginia Tech - beginning to separate out from the University into a commercial status much as VTLS did a decade or so ago. ILLiad does not feature ISO 10160 compliance it is used primarily for inter loan control via OCLC. It has a web based request user interface and uses MS SQL Server as a database. One nice feature is the barcode label that can be printed out on receipt of a ILL from another library. This is then read through ILLiad which tracks the circulation of the loan rather than sending it through the main library system - thus saving the need to add the copy to the database.
Finally, and in its way the most impressive thing I saw at this year's ALA was the use of Radio Frequency ID (RFID) systems on the Checkpoint stand. Here at last was the answer to many a circulation librarian's prayers. Replacing the barcode and security tag was an RFID tag - a small radio transmitter that contains the book number. The number can be read remotely so that in order to check a book out, it requires merely to be passed over a combined sensitiser/checkout point. The book drop contains a reader so that when a book is returned it is automatically checked in. Two more features impress. If a book is taken out of the library without being checked out then the system will tell you which book is setting off the alarm. And finally - that bane of librarian's life, the stock check is achieved by merely passing a wand along the spines of the shelved books. The system automatically lists the books to a file and produces a list of the books missing from stock!
The launch of the system at this ALA coincides with the implementation of the system in the Thorofare, NJ public library where it integrates with
their Dynix system.
|
