Revolution slowed...

[altivo]

Yesterday the administrative council for the full consortium met. Now, early last week the executive director of the consortium, he of the two ton boulder for a brain, finally realized that a small group of libraries were on the point of secession. This didn't set well with him, and his first reaction was, apparently, "I can't imagine why anyone would do that." That's because he is definitely part of the problem.

Anyway, he clearly consulted with someone cleverer than he is, but garbled the details. The proposal he presented to the council yesterday was that the mandatory skills testing of cataloging staff would be postponed completely for at least a year. That's because the issue we made the most noise about (I can be very vocal) was his cronies' demand that all catalogers regardless of experience or educational background, pass a test of their devising to prove competency in library cataloging. I flat out refused to take the test unless it was created and administered by an outside body. But anyway, that is not the real issue with the rebellion and proposed secession from the consortium. He just thinks it is.

The council agreed to this and passed it, but it requires approval by the full delegates assembly, which won't meet until the 24th. This cooled the anger of the rebellious library directors unfortunately, but not the anger of their staff. It was a carefully planned diversion. Time is short. The consortium leaders know this. If they can delay any definitive action by the five or six rebellious libraries, it will be too late for them to escape. A decision must be reached by the end of this month at the latest.

Our preferred vendor has already made a proposal for a contract renewal and continuation of our existing catalog system. It looks workable, but because the rebelling libraries waited so long to act, they will likely have to pay fees to break their contract with the bigger group. I warned them about this, but they didn't listen last year. My own library has an endowment fund that can cover our share of these costs, but we don't know about the other four institutions' budgets. The largest library in the group is not ours, and is a key player. If they decline to split, the rest of us will be prisoners too. Their director was hot to go it alone on Friday, but after yesterday's meeting she seems to have lost her steam.

So I've been making inflammatory speeches and writing eloquent e-mail all day trying to rekindle the flames. It's clear that the fire is not out, but has been reduced to hot coals. I have only limited hopes.

Typical MBA management trick, using game analysis and saddle points to determine the critical place to make a lying attack. The truth is, once the window of opportunity closes, they can (and likely will) renege on their promises. I've seen it too many times to expect anything else.

Worse, their chosen primary vendor has just been gobbled up by a venture capital organization. This sale took place apparently due to shortage of funds on the part of the software vendor. Not good. They are behind schedule with their development. They are not meeting deadlines that were set in our original contract. In fact, they will be a whole year late by their new estimate. I've heard this before. The last library vendor that did that to a consortium I was part of never delivered at all. They never completed the product they had sold, and were eventually bought out, by none other than this now failing vendor.

It's amazing how unwilling people can be to listen to the voice of experience, though. I told my boss to write down everything I said today, because nine months from now I will be saying "I told you so" and I don't want anyone denying that I said this. I predicted all through 2006 that SirsiDynix would fail to deliver on the contract, and sure enough, they failed. The admission came in November. There is no reason in the world to believe they will meet their new promises either. It is time to dump them and go back to a working plan.

Comments

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

It's almost like Keillor bases his Reference Librarian skits on you ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hmm? I've been out of touch with Keillor for a while. He does reference librarian gags now? That seems as likely as Baxter Black doing sheep jokes.

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

Oh, there have been a lot of skits recently on PHC where our librarian socks it to the evil board of directors who want to send all the books to a rural warehouse and turn the library into an internet cafe, or otherwise screw the library up. Sometimes she hits them over the head with unabridged dictionaries, but in the most recent one, she used her secret librarian knowledge, that has been passed down for centuries to the most elite and dedicated librarians, to open a portal and shove the evil chairman of the board into another dimension or something, when he was on the verge of having his way.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

OMG, I'm going to have to start listening again. I sort of gave up on him when he moved everything to New York City and carried on for months about that girl who couldn't decide between living in New York and marrying her sweetheart which meant moving to Seattle or something. It got deadly boring and stupid and I just moved on. We've listened to him occasionally since then, but I've completely missed this library stuff.

Unfortunately, he has his finger right on the truth with this. I've been fighting that battle for more than a decade, starting with the college library back in the 90s. Believe it or not, we had a college board of trustees that thought in 1995 that "everything is on the internet now anyway, so why don't we just abolish the library to save money..."

The conflict between serving users who want traditional print materials and users who are only interested in the internet is often very abrasive and difficult for us, and only seems likely to grow worse. This is a very polarized situation too, with few who are in both camps at the same time. My position, that the internet is fine for what it is but does not yet and may never replace traditional reference tools and printed materials, is extremely unpopular in general. I would never have put "public access" internet stations in public libraries. It has only contributed to that confusion and created endless headaches for us. Internet users are vocal and demanding. They expect us to drop everything and give them what they want immediately. They seem to think they are entitled to top priority over all other library patrons, and that they should never be thwarted in any way.

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

I wish they'd freshen-up the recurring skits before they turn into well-pulverized dead horses. Lives of the Cowboys is getting seriously old. Every once in a while there's a funny gag in it, but while "We're pardners...NO! Not that kind!" does get old after you've heard it two dozen times. The Guy Noir skits get old too. But The Adventures of Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian, while it can be a bit repetitive, hasn't been beaten to death yet.

I'm really surprised Keillor has done so well for such a long stretch. He's really good at his formula and keeping the goods fresh enough to hold a large audience every week.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

The song for you at the moment is "Jesus Jones - right here, right now"
O.O Gad I never thought that a library system would have the same problems as a private companies politics. Then again I suppose it's worse because many of the problems a public organisation has aren't related to profit making, dealing with investors or market changes....then again I've never worked in a public organisation.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've spent years working for both, kitty. When you come down to it, they aren't that different. Corporations are focused on profits, sure, while public and non-profit groups focus on saving or raising money. But the political struggles for power and prestige are identical, and the mechanisms by which all of it operates are much the same as well.

Unfortunately, I have trouble getting library directors to believe me when I say this. But a good 90% or so of what has happened in the last three years has followed the same lines I would have predicted and often did. No one believes my predictions, and when they come true usually no one remembers that I predicted it first. It's the curse of Cassandra.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

You need a cork board called "Altivo's predictions of the future" Write down your predictions, sign and date them then put them on the board for all to see :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I had something like that once back in 1987. I was ordered to take it down because it was "bad for morale".

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Well you could keep them in a file or something :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Nah. It's all in Dilbert anyway. Amazing how management never gets those jokes.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I've got the Dogbert management handbook somewhere :)
I like those comics.