We are sorry to report that the
Wired Librarians Newsletter (WLN: not the bibliographic utility)
was not an official sponsor of any part of the Los Angeles Olympics
nor did we even consider it. Somebody has to avoid all of the hype
and hysteria and besides that we couldn’t even afford tickets to get
in the gate…
Speaking of tickets a Chitown
radio station reported that authorities picked up Wozniak’s
better half for scalping tickets. We applaud her efforts…after
all they let ronnie in for nothing and they spent all that money for
blue hardware somebody had to take to the streets.
Library Micro News
Follett drops all
but Apple
In a bold and startling move
Follett Library Book Co of Crystal Lake IL announced last week that
they were dropping all software except Apple from their
software catalog. They will continue to carry library management
software for other brands but they dropped some 1800 titles from
their massive and overwhelming catalog.
Andy Larson, director of the
micro division said it was “pure economics”. Their previous efforts
included software for Commodore, TRS-80, and IBM as well as Apple
hardware. Orders for the other hardware makes did not justify the
inventory and effort necessary to keep them on to these markets and
since their market is primarily school oriented they felt quite safe
in this decision. He laughed when I asked him if he was tired of
imitating Sherwin Williams and trying to “cover the world”.
They shared with me the drafts
of the new Apple-only catalog in which they have expanded their
usual inclusion of review sources: this one lists producer back-up
policies, network policies and bulk purchase options. On sidelight
of this focus on Apple is that they are going to begin
discounting software….what next from the rose colored glasses???
Winnebago
Software
JG has been all my case since
we missed each other in Dallas. We finally got together during my
vacation in the northland (part of the reason for the tardiness of
this issue but that’s what makes summer worth living for) and a half
day in LaCrosse (I spent a week there one evening…
The 14 district media centers
are setting up the hard disk version of their circulation system,
and eventually they hope to load all of the node data onto a single
drive to provide a union list. That will have to wait for the
Winnebago catalog module which is currently not available. Each
record will have to be massaged when transferred, but there seems to
be a plethora of district staff available for the task. File
size on 10 meg is 60,000 items and 7,000 users.
I had the pleasure of meeting
two librarians using the system. You want to talk about having it
made: district staff take the shelf list from each site, key in the
records and run all the labels. I was amazed that they ran their
own labels (I wouldn’t do it again for my life!!) but Winnebago
supports label code 4 and they feel it is easier to run their own.
(S/M?)
Although they don’t use the
micro for word processing, spreadsheet or data base they seem happy
with the system and the way it worked into their libraries over the
last year. They plan to rekey their user information in the fall.
With all of the support the district staff is providing the
librarians in the trenches were spared the pain of getting the
system up and running.
The Winnebago system lacks
password protection and fails to trap overdue as circs occur the
user is merely identified as delinquent. But the folks in LaCrosse
seem happy with it.
Main Frame Junkies
The question on the floor is:
Can a mainframe library management mentality make the transition to
the micro world. We would like to think that a resounding yes is in
order; unfortunately the logic that works so beautifully in silicon
has a few glitches as it is fidded over to the human world. The
illustration need not even be in hires.
Earlier this year the bible of
lisci sent me a title on library automation. I read the work but
about fifty pages into it realized the author had not mention
micros. A quick zip to the index detailed one reference to my
little silicon friends. I sent the book back as unacceptable and
took the time to write the author a note saying he should pay some
heed to micro based library automation.
What a surprise for me to find
the very same author listed as a speaker at one of the AASL micro
sessions in Dalas. I journeyed over to the meeting room (actually I
went to see BC speak) and did this turkey ever gobble.
Micro Pro directories are rather
sort of the bibles of the computer world. The last set I looked at
set the micro price ceiling of $20,000 at which point you went up to
the mini world (regardless of CPU, operating system, etc.) Here is
our main frame guru telling us about $80,000 micro systems and
wowing us with multiplexors and the rest. Sorry Charlie, only the
best tuna are ready for deep….
The big blue “me too” mentality
really got to me. I often compare software packages in
presentations: and it’s always in the framework of “this does this,
that does that. Our hero kept mentioning the mini reputation of a
particular company and that’s going to make their micro stuff good.
I can get him a real good deal on some 994A’s.
This is not the only time I’ve
run into mainframe junkies who just don’t understand micros. The
solution to every problem is not another 40 meg of storage; or
handwiring a dozen 6502’s or 8088’s together; or some “real soon
now” black box that’s implanted into your liver so you won’t have to
key stuff in. You can snow people for whatever reason you want;
mainframe junkies just use bigger shovels.
