Jonathan,
That is a very good point and one that we have considered. The
workshops will both seek current practices as well as what each module
workflow SHOULD be if not limited by poor technology.
What we obviously need is not "I click this button in {Millenium,
Voyager, Aleph, Unicorn, Horizon, etc} then this button..." but rather
"User brings book to desk, book is scanned, user card is scanned, ... ,
I hand book back to user, user exits building, but armed guards jump out
because I forgot to demagnetize the book." Ok, maybe not quite like
that... ;)
We expect diversity of workflows, but within that we also expect core
services to become apparent. We'll see if our expectations are accurate
in the next few months.
Tim
Tim McGeary
Senior Systems Specialist
Lehigh University
610-758-4998
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Google Talk: timmcgeary
Yahoo IM: timmcgeary
Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
I have to admit that I worry that too many of our libraries business
processes as currently practiced are completely irrational and
nonsensical, and that to model new requirements or systems off of
them all aggregated and averaged out... may not be optimal.
Certainly, you have to collect evidence about business process needs
somehow.
But how many of us have experienced library workflow that actually
makes sense, instead of being habits built over years of having to do
weird workarounds to work with systems that unreasonably constrained
us, built on top of each other layer upon layer, combined in
organizations siloed off so the right hand doesn't know what the left
is doing, sprinkle on top the natural inclination of most people to
be creatures of habit who don't like changing their workflow unless
forced---with the result that I'm not even sure we know what makes
sense anymore.
Jonathan
Tim McGeary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 11/13/08 3:43 PM >>>
John Fereira wrote:
Tim McGeary wrote:
The Open Library Environment (OLE, pronounced oh-lay) Project
invites you to apply to participate in a two day Regional Design
Workshop. The purpose of this workshop is to provide a forum for
representatives of local research libraries and related
institutions to discuss our work surrounding the current
Integrated Library System and ideas on what this type of core
system should incorporate. Workshops are being held in a variety
of locations in the US over the next 2 months. For more
information and to find a location near you, go to:
http://oleproject.org/workshops.
That's quite a collection of workshops schedule. I've been
interested in the project since John Little first mentioned it
here. On behalf of the Spring 2008 JA-SIG conference committee I
invited him (and he accepted) to do a birds of a feather session at
the conference. There are some things that I am working on that I
think may fit well with the project (I was also a developer for a
piece of Kuali Rice, so I know some of the Indiana folks) but I
can't really tell from the number of workshops how the will
inter-relate. Since there were a few dates where there are
simultaneous workshops in different cities it would seem to me that
some sort of video conference and a real time collaborative system
(we used Macromedia Breeze for the Kuali project with developers
at Cornell and Indiana) would be useful.
With the current economy I know that travel budgets are undergoing
a lot of scrutiny (I've even heard of a very large university
system out west that may be halting all business travel for awhile)
attending even one of the workshops may be problematic.
John,
I hear you about the travel elements of this. That is why this
process will not just be closed off to these workshops. We are
hoping to have enough workshops to gather a wide range of business
processes that we can sift through to find commonalities to model the
core business practices. On top of that, we will model the
differences so that flexibility can be built into the OLE
architecture.
There will be plenty of time and opportunities for public comment on
the data gathered at the workshops and the models as they are
completed before the architecture stage is complete. So if you, or
anyone, cannot attend a workshop, there will still be opportunity for
comment, and we want and need it!
Thank you for your interest - and please encourage others who show
interest to participate in any way that they can.
Cheers, Tim -- Tim McGeary Senior Systems Specialist Lehigh
University 610-758-4998 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Google Talk:
timmcgeary Yahoo IM: timmcgeary
