more on the OCLC-SkyRiver controversy

Somehow, I missed this story (from earlier this spring) on Michigan State's concerns about OCLC services following its decision to use the Innovative Interfaces spin-off SkyRiver bibliographic utility.

A couple of principles stand out. First, there should be price competition in services. From that standpoint, the creation of a service like SkyRiver makes sense. But it's also clear that Michigan State has a close business relationship with Innovative, serving in a leadership role in the creation of a number of III products and services, including Encore and ArticleReach. And it was Clifford Haka himself who pointed out, in a positive profile story on III's CEO Jerry Kline, that Innovative's Millennium "has never been the most affordable system." In short, III's products are typically expensive relative to comparable products on the market. For Haka and Michigan State to pivot and suddenly suggest that cost is the central issue is disingenuous.

Innovative's products also tend to lag behind those of other vendors in the area of standards support. As Marshall Breeding summarized in the Perceptions 2009 survey, III's customers have concerns about Millennium's "perceived closed architecture." Innovative Interfaces' abstention in the DLF's ILS discovery proposal could be seen as another example of its unwillingness to embrace standards. Standards support would go far in reducing overall system costs for Millennium libraries. Additionally, the Millennium product isn't strengthened through the SkyRiver venture, nor is Encore discovery, nor the capabilities of Innovative's reporting packages.

From my perspective, that of a Systems manager at an ARL institution, there is an unprecedented narrowing of vendor service options, with a smaller number of vendors each trying to provide end-to-end services for an academic library. This could be EBSCO's discovery and content services; Ex Libris' Primo/Primo Central; or, the emerging set of OCLC services. I feel that these vendors are frequently perceived as marginalizing the customers which don't go for the complete investment in its services. In this sense, offering another bibliographic utility option to libraries is a good thing. Unfortunately, the emergence of SkyRiver is very closely identified with the preexisting problems and competition between OCLC and Innovative Interfaces (which are very familiar to libraries in the Pacific Northwest).