2012

Holding Your Vendor's Feet to the Fire

Debut "Technology Matters" column for Collaborative Librarianship. This article, Holding Your Vendor's Fee to the Fire, talks about the importance of standards in library technology and encourages libraries to be more demanding about the importance of adherence to those standards.

The article begins like this:

"The nut. The bolt. When you go to the hard-ware store with a bolt in hand, you probably feel pretty confident that you’ll be able to find the nut you need to tighten that bolt. When I hand over my bolt to my local Rex Ace Hardware man, he strides down a nearby aisle and within seconds, I’ve got my bolt’s mate. It screws on perfectly. Do I care who made the bolt or the nut? I do not. This is because nuts and bolts have standard on sizes and threads. Any quar-ter inch nut will screw onto any quarter inch bolt.

2012

Top Tech Trends in Materials Handling

Infopeople webinar highlighting the trends in materials handling including:

  1. Pricing of AMH systems going down
  2. Quality of AMH systems going up
  3. Automated check-in with sorting becoming standard
  4. Kiosks a hit but still a tad buggy

Lots of info about automated check-in systems, small sorters, advancements in sefl-check-in technology, kiosks and dispensers and new AMH products entering the market.

2012

Open Source and RFID Update

Presented Open Source and RFID Update at the Edgy Librarian online conference. This PDF file includes the slides as well as speaker notes.

Available here

2012

Materials Handling Automation to Reduce Operating Costs

Co-presented this session with Alan Kirk Gray (Darien Library), Gretchen Freeman (Salt Lake County Library) and John Callahan (Palm Beach County Library). Session was sponsored by PLA.

I provided the overview of the materials handling automation market and then each presenter talked about what they learned about how to reduce operating expenses as part of their implementation and operation of an automated materials handling system.

Our key take-aways:

Planning:

2011

White Paper: Why Sharing a Library System Makes Sense

This white paper identifies the key benefits of sharing a library system in the context of today’s technological environment. The benefits include cost savings, improved resource-sharing opportunities, providing a higher quality system staff, improving the quality of the collection, streamlining library workflows, optimizing the patron experience, eliminating routing slips and pre-sorting, and adding value to the consortial affiliation.

2011

Open Source - Open Libraries Update

On January 27th, representatives from Arcadia and Los Gatos libraries participated in the Edgy Librarian online conference. The archive is, unfortunately, only available to participants who paid (and presumably already saw the program).  

For the program, we did an "Open Source - Open Libraries Update" in which I interviewed the two people from each library who have been most intimately involved in their library's migration to Koha.  

2011

The Ladies That Changed The World

Slides from my lightning round at KUDOS Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The presentation is an entertaining (I hope) history lesson on how Koha came to be and how it changed everything. Trying to give some props to those brave souls that got us going on the open source ILS trajectory!

 

2011

Label-Less Library Logistics: Implementing Labor-Saving Practices in Massachusetts' High-Volume Resource Sharing System

This article is the culmination of my three year project with the Massachusetts regions as it pertains to their delivery operations. The paper presents important aspects and issues related to the merging of six regional library delivery services in a single statewide system that serves more than 550 libraries, that together circulate more than 15 million items annually throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The purpose of marrying the six distinct systems was to reduce redundancies and incorporate innovative features to improve library processing efficiency. Most libraries are members of one of nine separate shared integrated library systems. The paper covers the background, objectives, benefits, issues, lessons learned, and a successful request for proposal procurement process for this complex project.

2011

The Open Source ILS: Why So Many Are Choosing Koha or Evergreen and How To Include Them in Your Next Procurement

This was a joint presentation with Henry Bankhead of Los Gatos Public Library, Kevin Pischke of William Jessup University, Scott Hines of Palo Alto University, and Deborah Lipoma of Santa Cruz Public Library. I began with an overview of the ILS and Open Source ILS marketplace.  Then, each presenter talked about their own benefits and challenges along the way to moving to Koha or Evergreen. Finally, each presenter provided some useful procurement tips.

2011

ILS Marketplace - What's Up?

Joint presentation with John Thill of Napa City-County Library. I provided an overview of the Open Source ILS marketplace and John covered new developments on the proprietary side.