Library Information Systems: From Library Automation to Distributed Information Access Solutions Review

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Library Information Systems: From Library Automation to Distributed Information Access Solutions ReviewI was requested to do a business evaluation for a large library system upgrade and I wanted to read as much as I could about library systems to form a knowledge base from which to conduct my research. I bought this book with this specific purpose and I found that I had some of my questions answered, but there were many areas that I felt it could do much better.
The book is divided in four parts: The Broader Context, The Technologies, Management Issues and Future Considerations.
I found the Broader Context a bit too dry and not very useful. This part is mainly a list of current architecture, operating systems and benign statistics (such as government/non-government library systems parity). Most of the information is an enumeration of well known information and even a non-technical person would find little use in reading it.
The Technologies part was more useful, ironically, in the non-technical sections that discussed library systems data structure (records, cataloguing, circulation files, indexes and search). The sections dedicated to technology were pretty useless in my view because they go into low level detail such as network cards, coaxial cable, twisted pair cable, XML and other technical elements. The problem is that the scope of these technologies is so wide (the authors talk either about a PC card or about satellites and ATMs) and because if you are a librarian you would not understand it and if you are a technical person you will find this too simplistic to be meaningfully useful. This part really, is not specific to library systems. If you have someone open those pages in front of you without you knowing what the book is about, you could suspect you read a popular manual about computer science.
The Management Issues part suffers of the same problem: too much information about the obvious and too little on the real "management issues". For instance the authors talk about Usability of Systems spending quite a lot of space on issues like: web sites must be easy to find and access, be well formatted and edited and provide locally developed information. Some of the points are useful, but they are lost in a sea of trivia. To my disbelief, I found a sub-section dedicated to ergonomics issues (how chairs should be designed), backups and managing licenses, all under the same section called Managing Library Information Systems.
Future Considerations continues, what seems to be a tradition already with this book: drown the subject into insignificant details. The authors talk about TCP/IP Everywhere, Peer to Peer Networking and XML and Web Services. Finally, the last section talks about Digital Libraries. Unfortunately this section lasts only ten pages, without giving you too much joy in learning something real about digital libraries.
Overall, if you are patient you can get something out of this book if you are novice in either technology or in the business of library. The problem is that the book does not seem to align proactively to any project goal or have a practical purpose: if you are a librarian, you will find the pages that talk about technology confusing and unhelpful, unless you have a particular hobby and you are interested to know things like "what can a network card do in a library system". If you are a technical person you will not learn too much about the library systems and their business.
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