Tag Archives: library management systems

FOLIO

hosted by EBSCO; summary at Eventbrite. Disclaimers: there was a free lunch; I love open access; I’m appropriately suspicious of vendors and vapourware; and (I didn’t think this would be relevant before attending, but…) I like zebras.

FOLIO is “a community collaboration to develop an open source Library Services Platform (LSP) designed for innovation”.

Introduction from EBSCO
Community

  • Vendors – Ebsco, ByWater, SirsiDynix
  • ‘Open’ orgs – Koha, Index Data, Open Library Environment
  • Universities – Cornell, University of Sydney, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Newcastle, Università di Roma, National Széchényi

Platform

  • Will support ILS functions but broader – a ‘library services platform’ [à la Alma etc]
  • Each function as its own app – so can create completely new apps eg data mining, IR integration, learning management, research data, predictive analytics, grant management]

Marketplace

  • Apps from around the world built by commercial vendors who may charge, and by libraries who probably won’t. Can buy professional services.

Introduction from Peter Murray (open source community advocate for Index Data)
“an open source Library Services Platform built to support ILS functions and to encourage community innovation”

LSP

  • a platform intended for people to build on – a healthy platform depends on how much people contribute to it, which depends on the platform making this easy
  • made up of services
  • geared towards libraries – patrons, bibliographic records, authority records

Goals

  • create community where libraries can come together to innovate
  • leverage open source to reduce the “free as in kittens” costs
  • improve products by involving libraries more in development
  • bring more choice to libraries – eg multiple circulation apps you can switch between if one doesn’t suit; replace the fines app with a demerits app

Technical stuff:

  • “APIs all the way down”; inspired by microservices so can interface with the core through standard HTTP/REST, JSON/XML, etc; cloud-ready: scalable, ready for deployment on cloud but not bound to a particular vendor. Building with AWS as reference but could be run on Azure, on private VMware, etc.
  • Middleware inspired by the API Gateway pattern. (Core Okapi [this is where the zebras come in: the okapi is in the zebra family] is mostly complete, developers starting to work on functionality.)
  • Multi-tenant capability built-in
  • Vert.x; RESTful style, JSON for data format; request/response pipelines eg first request routed to authentication module then sent to next module; Event Bus that can be exposed with various protocols (eg STOMP, AMQP)
  • Dynamic binding – dependencies are interfaces, not implementations – allows you to replace circ module with another one that respects the same interface

Modules

  • self-contained http services (programming-language agnostic) – small, fast, do one thing very well
  • Okapi gateway requirements – hooks for lifecycle manage, strong REST/JSON preference (some libraries hosting hackathons with their comp.sci. department students)
  • might be grouped into applications (with dependencies) eg cataloguing, circulation

Client-side

  • Stripes – a user interface toolkit to let you quickly build the UIs you need to speak to the backend

Metadata – the FOLIO Codex

  • Takes concepts from FRBR (work, instance, holdings).
  • Format-agnostic (MARC, MODS, DC, whatever): core metadata “enough for other modules to understand”; native metadata “for apps that understand it” (eg circ module needs a title but doesn’t care about all MARC subfields or alternate title or or or…
  • Original format gets derived into FOLIO Codex (with work, instance, holdings) which gets used in modules. Current debate in the community about whether the original format should also be part of the codex.
  • Support multiple bib utilities and knowledge bases. Maintain list of local changes. Automated and semi-automated processes for updating local records with changes from source. “Cataloguing by reference”.

Progress
Timeline: Aug 2016 opened github repositories; Sept 2016 Open Library Foundation created to hold IP but licensed Apache; phase 1 Aug 2016-2018 (availability of FOLIO apps to run library (ILS)) followed by extended apps.
Project plan:

  • 2016 built gateway, sample app, UI toolkit, but also SIGs
  • Jan-Mar 2017 built circ, resource management, user&rights management, but also documenting
  • Apr-Jun 2017 acquisitions, system ops, knowledgebase, and onboarding dev teams
  • Jul-Dec 2017 apps marketplace and certification, discovery integration
  • 2018 vendor services and hosting, implementation, migration, data conversion, support

Websites

Community engagement
Lots happening on Slack channels, many meetups

Governance / lazy consensus
Open Library Foundation > Folio > Folio product council > SIGs > Development

OLF – 501(c)(3) (took a lot of time to get this status as had to prove EBSCO resources it but doesn’t control it) – mission to help libraries develop open stuff to support libraries, research, learning and teaching. Board inc Texas A&M, Duke, California Inst of Tech, EBSCO, JISC, CALIS (China).

Dev cycle:
SIGS >(Design process)> Design Teams >(Requirements process)> Analytics Teams >(Development process)> Dev Teams >(Review & feedback process)> SIGs

SIGs currently on topics like metadata management, resource access, user management, internationalisation

When OLE got libraries to map requirements, got 6000+; went back and said we need to cut this down, so they came back with only 3000+. Processes for FOLIO project to identify which ones needed by July 2018

Dev team – anyone can join in (biweekly check-ins, open toolds with wiki, forums, Slack, GitHub) but takes time/effort to really enjoy and contribute

Lots of other companies build something then demo and ask for feedback – by which time it’s too late to provide really meaningful feedback. FOLIO is getting the feedback during/before the dev process.

Demo
This was on a working FOLIO instance. UI still very(!) sketchy but nav bar along the top with apps, eg users, items, scan. Demo’d searching/filtering users; switching to items and back and the search results still display; search for an item to copy barcode; switch to scan, lookup user, paste in barcode, click ‘checkout’ button, switch back to users and can see user now has book borrowed; switched to items and can see item now checked out.

[My current thoughts: this is clearly not production-ready at present, and even assuming everything stays on track for the rest of phase 1 I wouldn’t consider implementing it in 2018 – but I think it’s worth keeping an eye on. And the open nature of the development makes keeping an eye on its progress easy.

One risk I see in the architecture is that it’d be quite possible for every library to be running a different set of modules which may complicate community troubleshooting. This is by design and also a strength (so public libraries don’t get forced into an academic mode of thinking, or vice versa, or both get forced into some terrible compromise), and the requirement that everything be built around core APIs and data structures probably mitigates much of the mess it could otherwise turn into.

Relatedly, a proliferation of similar but subtly different modules which are each used by only a few libraries could also be a problem. At the moment for example in the user module, the data fields are fixed. If you wanted to add eg preferred language for communications, you’d have to create an entirely new module. But it sounds like there’ll be some work in future to allow a certain amount of customisation so you could still use the same basic module.

I also see a risk in the marketplace potentially getting full of pay-for modules. Hopefully it gets populated with enough free modules to start with to keep things on an even keel – or even tilted towards open as vendors find limited demand for a pay-for module when there are so many free competitors. I could see a freemium model develop… The fact that there are so many libraries and open-friendly organisations involved from the start is promising.]

New workflows and skill sets in Alma #vala14 #s42

Melissa Parent and Lesa Maclean Go with the flow: discovering new workflows and skill sets in Alma

Fully hosted. Not a “library management system” but a “library services platform”. LMSs are built around a catalogue with holdings – description and access for physical resources, not good at dealing with electronic resources. LSP – new info architecture unifying resources management, print and electronic resources and workflows in one place, all systems in one system. [Yebbut I’m still tagging this with LMS though. As described really this just sounds like it’s not a *bad* library management system. I mean, it may do things really really differently it’s still a system that manages library stuff.]

Before Alma had Voyager LMS, SFX link resolver plus central knowledge base, Verde ERMS to do admin work of acquisitions, licenses, trials, relationships between eresources etc. Voyager and SFX tied into Primo discovery layer. Alma (also tied into Primo) unifies resource management – print and eresources together – description, access and management all in one place.

Ebook workflows: under Voyager took 17 steps to get ebooks from ordering to access. Had to edit data in extra steps with MarcEdit; activate in a separate SFX workflow; enter relationships and license associations in Verde. Under Alma it’s 7 steps: data automatically edited with normalisation rules at point of import; ebooks automatically activated in Primo; relationships/license associations automatically created. Idea of automation and human intervention on exceptions only.

Sounds wonderful and is wonderful but complex and powerful and takes time to get used to.

(LMS about managing bib records; Alma about managing actual resource.)

metadata management Institution zone Community zone
populated with eresources that can all share
inventory ebook connected into the institution zone by an “intellectual entity” ebook

By activating something in the Community Zone it pulls it into Primo discovery – but still being managed by Ex Libris, linked to Community Zone intellectual entity. So get a read-only copy of shonky Community Zone record. But can create a local copy of the record and unlink the bad record. Inventory is responsibility of vendor, but associated with our good bibliographic record.

Wonderful but complex for staff. People used to dealing with print-only now dealing with print and electronic. Dealing with both records and inventory, distributed across different layers and different zones. This can lead to confusion about what Alma is and uncertainty about when they see something in Alma is it normal (just new) or is something wrong?

Eg user encountered 7 duplicates on inventory ISBN search but didn’t recognise this as an issue.
Eg user loaded same file twice. Recognised it so went into problem-solving mode and deleted acquisitions info, inventory, bibs – but didn’t recognise that Alma should have just noticed the matches.

Next steps
Innovation requires collective effort – need to get everyone on board. Need more training and orientation. Need to look at the print/electronic division of knowledge – old division of tasks between staff doesn’t work with new technology.

Q: Monash – share your feelings, challenges, ideas. Do you have a feeling of how many records you’re likely to modify from Community Zone and how many to live with?
A: No systematic plan at the moment, just ad hoc. What about at Monash?
Q: Don’t know, probably quite a lot.

Q [me]: Can you feed back modified records to Community Zone for benefit of other libraries?
A: Not yet but Community Zone still in development and working group in place – not sure if they’ll develop in this way though.

Q: Were the changes as big in other teams as for you?
A: Circulation staff had things to sort through.

Q: How does this work with suppliers? Some libraries using suppliers like YBP to activate ebooks. Do you maintain traditional relationships or work on platforms?
A: Never thought of this, discussion hasn’t come up. What’s happening at Adelaide?
Q: Currently go to platform but not sure how it relates to sources like ebrary.