Chin up, Jonathan. I am hoping to attend one of these precisely because
I want to talk about how I /wish /my workflow looked, and dream about
tools that would make my life easier - "ideas on what this type of core
system *should* incorporate." I can't be the only one.
Anna H.
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
--
Anna Headley
Swarthmore College Library
610.690.5781
[EMAIL PROTECTED]