oh! Symphony!

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention this: we're "moving" to Symphony over Christmas. I'd like to revisit what SD calls Symphony:
"SirsiDynix Symphony, blending the best of the Unicorn GL3 and Horizon 8/Corinthian systems, offers libraries and consortia the stability, quality, and performance they need to operate productively and efficiently, while equipping them to serve people and entire communities." (from here)
It is a "blending." Blending which parts of Horizon, you may ask? Good question! I have no idea, because here's how much of a big deal our move to Symphony is:

Our Unicorn administrator said this about the move:
"The Unicorn test system will be down for much of next week. During this time we will be performing an upgrade to the latest version of Unicorn software -- 3.2.1 “Symphony.”"

This cracks me up. He doesn't even pretend like it's different. I could swear that he's also said to us in person that it's "you know, pretty much exactly the same as Java Workflows."

Now, what also happened today (and which triggered this little quotation fest) was that someone posted on the Unicorn listserv that they are moving from Horizon to Symphony and would appreciate any input from anyone else who made the move. The Unicorn listserv is a closed list, so I guess the Unicorn list is now the Symphony list. Oh, Sirsi. Perhaps I was right after all.

oh, SirsiDynix

You strike again, SD. Our serials cataloger pointed out that when working in Sirsi's Java Workflows, you cannot always get the html links in a marc record to take you to a browser. The link simply will not work. They are speculating that this has to do with links that include special characters, like an ampersand.

Our IT guy says, and I quote: "This is a bug at our current Unicorn patch level. it will be cleared after we upgrade to a new version in the coming Christmas holidays."

Point of order, IT guy! When links are broken that are supposed to work, and links are presenting themselves as being in working order when they are not, is NOT A BUG. It's a functionality failure.

Now, do I think that our IT guy is the one who called it a "bug"? No, I do not. I'm absolutely positive that SirsiDynix is calling it a bug, because they would often do the same thing when we had "bugs" in Horizon. I put "bugs" in quotes because those problems were really basic functionality failures. This isn't something like "oh, when I hit this and this and do this thing and then I try to enter a 520 field in the MARC editor, it freezes!" No. This is "our links don't work, but they're still made to look like they work." That is basic functionality, and it is broken. We shouldn't have to wait for the next upgrade for this to be fixed. It's madness.

Although I did escape most of the SirsiDynix craziness when I left my former job, at least I can rest assured that the craziness continues without me, and that it has not miraculously gone away now that Symphony is in full developmental swing.

More Talk about Unicorn

I hadn't been hearing much from the SirsiDynix world lately, but today, I heard a whole lot. My boss is on a committee to investigate new search portals to lay over top of our existing GL 3.1 (Unicorn) ILS, and just attended the Sirsi SuperConference. Here's what I learned today:

From my boss: Aquabrowser and Primo and even Encore are much better developed than Sirsi's search portal (which is called EPS, I believe). Although my boss thought that Sirsi doesn't have federated searching, from looking at their website I think that they do, it's just not bundled in with their portal. Which I think is really stupid. Although, in an effort to keep their customers from running to open source or other options, I think that people at SD are trying to scare their customers--my boss has it in their head that open source software usually has no support attached to it. When actually, lots of third-party vendors are starting to support open source. Seems like a scare tactic to me.

The other interesting thing is that we talked a lot about how SD is going to stop supporting the C client version of Unicorn at the end of 2009, and that means everyone needs to either get onto Unicorn Java client, or face the fact that they are going to be left without support. Makes sense. C client SUCKS.

And while listening to all this, my boss also said "They're changing the name of Unicorn to Symphony. But it's just a name change."
Finally, real confirmation that Symphony is not the "blended model" that SD claimed it was to the Horizon users. I'm sure this is no surprise to any Horizon user anymore, but I do think it's interesting that Sirsi customers are getting all this comforting talk about how it's not changing at all, and Horizon customers were getting all this comforting talk about how Symphony is going to be great for them and how it ISN'T Unicorn (when many Horizon customers didn't get Unicorn for very specific reasons).

So anyway, thought I'd put all this information out into the interwebs. Fly free, little information!

Workflows v. Horizon

Are you ready for this? I now have the old Unicorn version and the "new" Unicorn version on my desktop, simultaneously. The old one....I don't even know how to explain it. It's like a dinosaur version of an ILS. It has little radio buttons, but no mouse-over captions to help you understand what the little buttons do. It's one of those systems where, if you don't know what you're doing, you're not going to know what you're doing.
Ok, so fast forward to the "new" Unicorn. I put new in quotes because it's not really new; apparently this java-based platform has been around for a couple of years. But this institution just picked it up.
As a former Horizon user, I want to say, it's like Horizon's little brother or something. It just looks so much like Horizon's platform! Some differences, of course. No pretty picture when you open Unicorn, but it has drop down folders for each module, and while Unicorn (apparently) doesn't have hotkeys (although it might; I haven't been trained yet), there are "wizards" for each module that give you the shortcuts to actions for each module. It also calls Horizon's "bibs", "titles." Minor stuff, really. I am positive, of course, that the backend acts totally differently from Horizon, but it's interesting that they really ended up in similar places in terms of look and feel for the staff-end.
I think that Horizon users (like myself) would feel incredibly constrained by Unicorn, though. No SQL queries? No way to change the look and feel of each and every view? LAAMMME. But some of the views that Unicorn does provide are really neat. Like when you search in Workflows, you can get a little list of what you searched for, and you get a full view of each highlighted record underneath that list. You don't have to open a new window just to see the full record!
It's the little things, isn't it? More to come!

The Crossroads of Unicorn and Horizon

I've crossed over to the dark side, you know. The Unicorn side of SirsiDynix. I am going to have so much to tell you all about the differences between old Unicorn (WorkFlows) and new Unicorn (the Java based version) and how different it is from Horizon... yep. Tomorrow I'm learning WorkFlows a little (old Unicorn look and feel), and after that I'm going to learn the Java platform of Unicorn (new look and feel). I've already talked to the Unicorn person a little, and she's from a III site in her last job, and she tells me that Unicorn is incapable of creating custom queries like III and Horizon can. I feel as if I'm at a nexus of ILSes, and sometime soon it's all going to become clear and the library universe will be laid out at my feet.

Or something.

SuperSymphony!

For anyone who isn't a Horizon customer who might read this blog, I feel like it's my duty to keep you informed on what's happening in SirsiDynix Land. And there are a couple new things to report.
First, SirsiDynix is having a SuperConference! This SuperConference! will have both Unicorn users and Horizon users. I assume they're doing this because the two groups have already been meeting together for some time, and SD must feel as least a little left out. Here's the skinny on the SuperConference!:

"SirsiDynix SuperConference 2008 will offer many unique opportunities for learning about current and future technologies, including SirsiDynix Unicorn and Symphony and a range of add-on solutions. There will be high-quality, informative user presentations, SirsiDynix presentations, and vendor exhibits.

Don't miss your chance to connect during meals, no-conflict breaks, and after hours with nearly 900 of your colleagues and the SirsiDynix team members you regularly interact with."

See? I think they want to get on the joint-meeting bandwagon.

Of course, meanwhile, at ALA midwinter, the two groups got together. They've been doing this for awhile now. Nothing too shocking came out of the ALA joint meeting, but I always think its good when people can subvert the "system" and make change on their own. One interesting thing is that the CODI group (the Horizon user group) will probably take over the hosting of the new Symphoney listserv in 2008.
And they want to start a mentoring program for people who want to move over to Symphony. I wonder if this will entail pairing people from Unicorn (mentor) with people from Horizon (mentee).
There was also a push to see if the products which worked with Horizon will continue to work with Symphony. There's apparently going to be a survey taken of users to see which products we use.
It's interesting, isn't it, that SD hasn't already told us which ones will work? I kind of wonder if none of them work--Horizon and Symphony seem to be very different products.

Client Care for SirsiDynix

I haven't talked about this, mostly because I hadn't visited the site yet, but the old Dynix "customer care" website is in the process of switching over to the Client Care Portal. This is a joint client care website for both Unicorn and Horizon. I assume it's in place to get ready for Symphony. But it has this great added benefit to any Horizon customer (and Unicorn customer, too, I imagine), which is that you get to see how Unicorn works (and thus how Horizon works). Unicorn uses "patch clusters" instead of what we just called "updates" in Horizon, and I can get overviews of various Unicorn modules and such. I can see known issues with Unicorn, read white papers about the modules, etc.
I mean, granted, its all basically marketing nonsense, or things that I could find out very easily if I solicited some brochures and whatnot, but since traditionally, Horizon and Unicorn users weren't allowed to connect at all through the company, its very nice to see the other side. I know, I know: I'm saying something nice about SirsiDynix! It feels weird to me, too.

Clash of the Titans

We had a meeting the other day. It was me, my boss, and 4 people from the IT department. We had come together to talk about the library system, and where we are going from here. We talked for about 15 minutes about where Horizon was going, since the IT department is generally out of the loop on that, and about the update (7.4.1), and about Aquabrowser, and then we got into the list of ILSes I had emailed to them.
And then wham!
No, didn't get hit by a bus. Rather, one of the IT guys says "ok, I just have to ask--what does 'acquisitions' mean?"
So I metaphorically took him by the hand and explained how a book moves through the library. I've always thought that was the easiest way to explain how an ILS works. He gets all that; most people get library workflow pretty quickly, because hey, we've all used libraries since we were knee-high to a grasshopper. But then I said "and there's one other module--serials."
Looks of total vapidity took over their faces. It didn't take over my boss's face, of course, since he is a librarian and knows all about such things.
And I have a moment of small panic: how do I explain the chaos that is serials? The name changes, the embargoes, the missed invoices, the backlog, the missing issues, the theft? Luckily my boss saved me, in a way, by saying that most serials modules for ILSes have never worked adequately enough for a serials department to completely forego their old paper-based systems. That seemed to appease the IT people.
The things that people don't know about libraries.....I never really thought that we had a seedy underbelly, but trying to explain the workings of even our own well-oiled and well-run library makes my head hurt.

Horizon 7.4.1

"SirsiDynix would like our Horizon customers to know that we are committed to supporting our Horizon, Horizon Information Portal and Web Reporter products well into the future. We will continue to provide maintenance releases for these products for the next 4-6 years."


Yes, 7.4.1 is officially released. I guess that in October they started beta testing, which I think I heard about, and since all problems were resolved without incident, it's time to go full-bore with the update. And that's all it is; an update. Nothing fancy, just bug fixes, mostly. Although in addition to 7.4.1, there's a new portal, too. HIP 3.09/4.13. Which needs Java webstart. Have I ever talked about how much I dislike java? And yet here we go, using MORE of it. I know it's not Java's fault, and it used to be good, but seriously, it's not that reliable now and I always have one computer here that needs environmental variables manually changed in order to run Horizon successfully with Java. Lame. Of course, since Horizon uses Java 1.4.2, I suppose it's not like you have to use the newest version of Java or anything.
This post is a little ramble-y, but since there's literally no feedback from the listserv right now, I don't know what other people think about it. Only myself. I assume this update will fix some things and leave a lot of other things unfixed. Par for the course with most software companies.

Integrated Library Systems

There are several ILSes out there....and my library should know, since we're probably going to purchase one of them soon.
I think I've talked a little about Koha and Evergreen, the new kids on the block. They're both open source, which means that a couple of American companies have moved in to provide support for these free systems, for a nominal (!) fee of course. I've heard mixed things about the Koha support company, LibLime, mostly because they purport to support Evergreen, but in reality try to keep people from getting it. So all of their users use Koha. Equinox, which I believe was started by the people who originally built Evergreen, is the main supporter of Evergreen. There are a few other companies that support these open source systems, one in Canada, I think, one in France, a couple in Australia.
There are also the proprietary systems. From conversations I've had and overheard, people think it's a foregone conclusion that proprietary ILSes are going the way of the dodo. I don't know that i believe this. The systems themselves might eventually become obsolete, but these companies can just follow the path of LibLime or Equinox, and start their own open source support (LibLime certainly charges as much as a proprietary vendor).
The PVs (proprietary vendors) are: III (Innovative), Ex Libris, AGent (Auto-Graphics), Polaris, SirsiDynix, and Liberty3 (Softlink).
There are a lot of proprietary systems, although the numbers do seem to be dwindling. I was talking to my husband about the apparently anti-competitive behavior on the part of SirsiDynix in relation to Horizon, and he said "ah, but it's really just good business practice."
And he's right. All of these companies just do what they have to do in order to make money. Lots of library people (and the library vendors) like to talk about how they're all just librarians at heart, and they really want what's best for us. But in actuality, they're just a business, and they want to make money. That's their real mandate. All the rest is just fluff. And I think that the third-party vendors who are riding the wave of open source software will end up the same way--in it to make a buck.
But hey, this is America! That's why we're all here.

A short history of Horizon, part II

Turns out, by "tomorrow" I meant Monday. Psych!
At any rate, back to Horizon. So the stage was set for Horizon to die off, all the libraries to go stomping off in anger to open source systems or the other big library companies. The people who bought SirsiDynix obviously hadn't thought about this eventuality. A lot of librarians like to make the investors out to be complete jerks, who think that librarians are all lambs to the slaughter. I don't think that's exactly right. I think they just underestimated the market. Lots of libraries had been with Horizon for many, many years (since it was called Dynix Classic; we're talking pre-1995, at least). And library systems are a lot like cars--if you've had the same 1995 Corolla for the past 12 years, you're at least open to the idea of trading it in. And once the transmission goes out, you're definitely in the market. You might buy the new Corolla, but then again, Nissan just came out with the new Altima and it's pretty hot-looking.
This is how libraries reacted, initially. Horizon was dying, they started looking at Symphony, but then--to stretch the analogy a little further--the Toyota salesperson turned out to be really insincere and kind of pushy. The SD people also turned out to be insincere, to many people. There was obviously a backlash from the people whose contracts were nullified, and what did SD do? They issued a press release (you should really read it) where they basically said that everyone who didn't like the new system should just learn to live with it, because that's how things are.
Of course, almost everyone jumped up and said "I'm buying an Altima!" (or a Ford Fusion, or maybe even a VW Jetta). Once it became clear the libraries would just take their toys and go home, SD did an almost exact 180. Fast forward a year, and we're at the conference of users of Horizon (this wrapped over the weekend). Now the tune is completely different.
Upgrading to Symphony has become just that--an upgrade. Not a migration costing almost $100K, but an upgrade, which costs nothing, and a 40% discount on support if you sign a three-year contract. I do believe that someone has changed their minds about librarians. Of course, even with that kind of financial incentive, my library is still thinking of going to open source software. The tide has officially turned, and I don't think that SD was really the cause. Just a push in a more egalitarian direction.