EOS International Company Blog
EOS at SLA 2013
The annual Special Libraries Association (SLA) Conference will be hosted in San Diego, CA this year from June 9-11, 2013. As usual, EOS International will be represented in the Exhibit Hall and will have a chance to speak with you in person.
On Monday, June 10th from 12:00pm-1:30pm, EOS will host a Luncheon Seminar at the San Diego Convention Center. Richard Hulser, Chief Librarian, from LA Natural History Museum will present on the topic: “How to Re-energize Your Library”. He will discuss things you can do today to liven up your library, including what he has done to re-energize his library at the LA Natural History Museum.
That same evening, EOS will host a Client Appreciation Event on a yacht from Hornblower Cruise & Events. Enjoy the sunset, ocean & dinner as we cruise around the San Diego harbor with fellow clients, staff from EOS International, and special guests. The event will take place on Monday, June 10, 2013 from 5:00pm-9:00pm.
EOS Clients who are planning on attending SLA 2013 in San Diego are welcome to join EOS for dinner, music, sightseeing, and networking on the Hornblower Cruise.
SLA is sure to be a great conference. We’ll see you in San Diego in June!
Selecting an ILS Vendor
By: Salvatore Provenza, Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing, EOS International
There is a great deal of information a library director needs to consider when selecting a new ILS vendor. Here are some of my initial thoughts on the subject.
1. If you are an American library, you should consider partnering with an American vendor. This could exclude vendors that are headquartered in other countries, but may have a reseller or subsidiary in the U.S.
2. The vendor should have a full-time staff of employees, not just independent contractors to provide software, sales, marketing, support and custom development services.
3. The vendor must be continually growing and profitable.
4. The vendor should provide local “Live” 24/7/365 Help Desk support in your country.
5. The vendor should give you the option of a cloud-hosted or on-premise solution, with a no cost option to switch delivery at any time.
6. The ILS product should be web-based, build on industry standards, MARC and RDF compatible, and have at least 500 or more clients that have been using the solution for several years.
7. If you are a federal, state or regional library, you should choose a vendor with a valid GSA Agreement, high government security standards and many government library references.
8. If you are a multi-national library, you should partner with a vendor that has clients in all countries that you have a library, in their local language.
9. The vendor pricing model should allow you to get all the features you need at the very lowest price.
10. Your selected vendor should be able to manage both print and digital collections easily.
Open Source vs. Proprietary Library Software – Case Study with Northland International University
We often come across people looking into an open source solution during their evaluation process. Recently, we talked with Northland International University’s Library Director, Van Carpenter to ask why they chose EOS.Web as their new academic library software solution instead of their existing Koha installation. We put together a Case Study as the result of our discussion. We hope you find value in reading it.
Here’s a couple excerpts:
“Although Koha is ‘free’ and customizable, the university did not have the staff to program in Koha’s native language, Perl. Nor did they have extra budget money to pay the Koha vendor to develop custom solutions. This led to unmet expectations, frustration and disappointment.”
“The set of features in EOS.Web is priced well under other vendors delivering the same features. Van remarks: “EOS.Web was reasonably priced and incredibly valued with all the same features you need at a lower cost, where you may need to pay several thousands of dollars elsewhere.”
Your Content—Where Should It Be?
By: Daniel Fitz-Enz, Trainer, EOS International
As more and more documents are becoming digitized, offering electronic content to your end users is important. You should take a look at the pros and cons of each option available to you. A few options available online are e-books, e-journal, e-newsletters, spreadsheets, and databases. The answer to ‘where should it be?’ is different for every library.
Attend our Webinar: “Ways to Maximize Time & Money in your Library Through Effective Use of Technology”
Want to get technology to work for you in your library? Need to have it save you time and money? Then you will want to attend to our webinar next week! Richard Hulser, Chief Librarian of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, will be speaking on the topic of “Ways to Maximize Time & Money in your Library Through Effective Use of Technology”.
The presentation will begin at 10am PT (1pm ET) on January 16, 2013. The entire presentation will last about 40 minutes. He will cover several points within two primary topics: Technology strategy planning to ensure optimum results and Pros and Cons of off-site ‘Cloud’ implementation.
After Richard’s presentation we will show you how EOS.Web can help you maximize technology in your library as well.
We are excited to be offering this new type of resource to the librarian community. We hope you enjoy it! Sign up here.
After the webinar we will make the recording available via download.
Resources for Marketing Your Library
Most librarians face the common challenge of maintaining and increasing library usage. Part of the solution is marketing or promoting library services to patrons.
The word ‘Marketing’ or ‘Selling’ can strike terror into the heart of many people—and librarians are no different. This skill set may come naturally to some, but it is difficult for countless others.
MARC, you are so beautiful… to me-e-e-e
By: Jill Moen, Technical Writer at EOS International, has worked for EOS since the days of Data Trek and DOS-based systems. She has an MLS from the University of Arizona, Tucson. Connect: LinkedIn.
When someone says they want to get rid of MARC, I want to shout, “No, please, you just don’t know MARC!” Whether you are concerned with description/access, display/suppression, data sharing, harvesting, and/or retrieval, MARC continues to be a powerhouse for encoding metadata.
4 Ways to Answer the Challenge of Metadata and Cataloging
Librarians are facing the challenges of incorporating metadata into their catalog. To help with this we thought we would post a list of 4 ways to answer the challenge of Metadata and Cataloging from our book The Digital Library Survival Guide by Joe Matthews:
Read 4 Ways to Answer the Challenge of Metadata and Cataloging
Library Software Costs—What Makes Up the Price of Library Software?
“How much will it cost?” We are often asked this question. It is also a question not easily answered. Primarily because library software pricing depends on many factors.
Librarytechnology.org’s Marshall Breeding stated here that “Library automation isn’t in the realm of shrinkwrap software. Rather, each installation is unique, and it’s advantageous to both the libraries and the companies to peg the price of the software to appropriate indicators.”
Every organization’s needs are unique and we view our job, as the the library software vendor, to provide a solution that molds to your needs. But what are some of those “indicators”? What are the things that make up library software costs?
Read Library Software Costs—What Makes Up the Price of Library Software?
5 Things You Can Do To Get Your Library Noticed
By Bryan Long, Account Executive, EOS International
In a world of diminishing budgets and where Google is King, libraries are put in a position to need attention.
They need to be used. If libraries are used, their patrons will then fight for them to remain open when they are on the budget’s chopping block. With that in mind, below are 5 things Libraries can do to get noticed and provide top of mind awareness.
