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January 23, 2007
AADL goes social
John Blyberg has launched the Social OPAC for the Ann Arbor District Library. So, what's so social about it? You can learn more by watching the screencast on John's post. Users can "rate, review, comment-on, and tag items" and also see the results of their own work through their account (all their tags, all their comments, etc.).
John basically built, by hand, what III's new Encore product (tres expensive) does, and then some. As John says of Encore: "We did not purchase it, nor do we intend to. Instead we’re going to use the money we saved to buy a Lexus. *grin*" Better yet, John is making the source code for what he created available for free for anyone else to use at: http://www.blyberg.net/files/ So, III's Encore is the cost of a Lexus (and I think John's lowballing a bit there) and John's version is free, and does more.
This is very, very exciting. If only every library had a John. Or, better yet, the ILS vendors should have people like John on staff who can build beautiful seamless creations like this, and then not charge an arm and a leg for it.
January 23, 2007 | Permalink
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Comments
I beg to differ. I'm at an III Library and WebPac Pro is something we were told we would have to pay (and pay dearly) for. Perhaps it's free for some customers with certain software options that they've already purchased? I don't know...but it's not free to us.
Posted by: Sarah Houghton-Jan (Librarian in Black) | January26, 2007
WebPac Pro is not "expensive"; it's free to III customers.
Posted by: Phil Shirley | January26, 2007
You make a good point Debbi. But just as there are staff costs with AADL/John's work, there are staff costs with III's work as well (as I well know, having done some of that work myself). To me, that's a wash. The savings is in that you don't have to pay for the darn software/code in the first place. A lot of what John has done is also what III is selling with WebPac Pro, another expensive add-on which has features which, honestly, should come originally with every ILS out of the box and not require extra payment for functionality like quality relevancy ranking search algorithms.
Posted by: Sarah Houghton-Jan (LiB) | January24, 2007
As an AADL user, I'm always interested to see what John is up to. And the most recent additions to the AADL catalog are great. But, to say that these additions are what Innovative will be providing with Encore is not really correct -- both ratings and community reviews are available without purchasing Encore. My understanding is that Encore will incorporate those existing pieces as well as other tools including faceted searching, federated search results, tagging, and some form of recommender functionality. As the product is still in active development mode, it's hard to say what all the features will be.
I can't speak to what Innovative is charging for their product but to imply that libraries can use John's work for free is not completely true -- yes, he's providing the source code but, as he makes clear, it's not exactly plug and play. Does this diminish what he's accomplished or what he's making available? Of course not! But, it's important to acknowledge that free code isn't equivalent to free -- there are real costs involved in implementing a project like this. Are those costs equal to what a vendor will charge? Probably not. But, that assumes you have folks on staff who can do the implementation and ongoing maintenance.
Now that I'm done quibbling, I'll go back to tagging and reviewing on the AADL system!
Posted by: Debbi | January23, 2007
