Breedings' ILS satisfaction surveys...and my ILS vendor

I had the chance to participate in Marshall Breedings' 2007 and 2008 ILS satisfaction surveys. My institution's use of its ILS (Innovative Interfaces Millennium) and its relationship with the vendor was very much in flux during 2008; at the end of the year, we moved (for consortium borrowing support) from the use of III's INNReach software to OCLC's WorldCat Navigator. Given the fact that this move impacted a significant number of libraries (36 Millennium installations directly), I wanted to review and compare Breedings' results from 2008 with those from the previous year.

There is a very slight slippage in satisfaction with Millennium. For the ILS satisfaction question, the scores are 0 to 9. Looking at submitters (each representing an institution) who ranked Millennium in the 0-4 slots, I came up with these data:

2007 18 / 254 = 7.09%
2008 22 /293 = 7.51%

Not much of a change, but I believe that it reflects a concern about the Millennium product and III's approach towards standards support. In fact, Breedings' article analyzing the data for all vendors emphasized these points:

Many libraries using Millennium provided comments expressing a very wide range of opinions. Many were positive, noting the strengths and the stability of the product. Some complained about the cost of the software or its lack of openness.

In terms of the submitters views on III as a company over the two years, the mean scores were essentially the same (6.45 in 2007, 6.44 in 2008).

The fact that both surveys combined all library types (with public libraries outnumbering academics 731 to 465 in 2008) explains, in my view, why the approval/disapproval data are pretty stable over this two year period.