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Library Management System Evaluation Committee

LMS Meeting Notes, 2/24/97

Lynne is sending summaries of the ALA vendor meetings to the LMS-L list.

At ALA she also met with representatives of Harvard, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, all of whom are actively looking for an LMS. They shared the following information:

• Minnesota is looking for a state-wide system. They have a $12 million budget. They are finishing their RFP by July 1st and will spend a year to choose a system and another year to implement it.
• Iowa (currently a NOTIS site) started looking a year ago and are expecting funding for next year.
• Harvard extended its deadline. Still hoping to implement something by July 98.
• Wisconsin's RFP will be out by the summer. Evaluation is scheduled for 98 and will take a year for implementation. They have a two-tier evaluation process, first a technical review then a functional review. The rankings of the two reviews are in reverse order.

Discussion:
Bill Turner made the suggestion of eliminating vendors based on technical considerations. Only three vendors talk about 3 tier client-server architecture with a commercial database management system. We should eliminate the ones that are only putting client-server icing over their old systems. Also he thinks object oriented databases would not be efficient in our environment (where it would benefit only a few hundred thousand records out of 6 million). He thinks that obsolete systems are the ones whose functionality is the best because they have had 10 years to polish the systems. He would like to eliminate III, SIRSI and DRA and only look at VTLS, Endeavor, CGI and Ameritech (the latter for financial reasons only.)

Diane Hillmann: We have to make a long-term decision. NOTIS was supposed to be a temporary solution and it's been around for 10 years.

Tim Lynch: If there is nothing viable out there now we should try to maintain NOTIS for a while instead of moving to something temporary. Bill T. can put together numbers on how much keeping NOTIS for 3-4 more years would cost.

Diane Hillmann: There is no perfect product but there might be something out there that is better than NOTIS.

Tim Lynch: 1 year might shake up the field. E.g. relational databases might become obsolete. Object oriented might be the way to go.

Zsuzsa Koltay: if the project slides a year we should look at our decision again before actually signing a contract because the field is such a moving target.

Bill Turner: The life cycle of these systems is 5-8 years. There will be another major technology change by then.

Lynn Personius will send out a memo to ask members of the committee to vote on whether to eliminate vendors based on technical considerations at this point.

Recorder: Zsuzsa Koltay.

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rev. 3/31/97 dih