Library Technology Guides

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Volume 9 Number 10 (October 1989)

Vendor failure

Vendor failure isn't a rare occurrence in the library automation industry. Even market leaders can run into financial trouble. When this happens to its vendor, a library can be hurt in the scramble to find ways to service the automated system on which it depends. The worst scenario involves having bought a system from a company which services both hardware and software, then having the company not survive, and ending up with both unmaintained hardware and software.

But how can a library tell when its vendor is in serious financial trouble? How does an organization investing tens-or hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in a product make sure that the vendor will outlive the product?

Constantly monitoring the financial health of a vendor of interest to the library helps avoid problems, but it requires a good deal of work. The first step is to require financial statements from vendors when selecting a product, or when making a major upgrade purchase. The purpose is to establish that the company is stable, well managed and continuing to grow. The evaluation should be made by a CPA or otherwise qualified expert. That the knowledge of how the vendor is doing financially is not merely an academic issue has been made abundantly clear in the last few months. In the library automation industry, Carlyle has gone into Chapter 11, and Geac has only recently emerged from court protection. Several computer manufacturers have forecast lower-thanexpected revenues, even losses.

Library managers or purchasing agents should also investigate who is manning a company's financial controls. At a healthy company, the chief financial officer (CFO) is well qualified and has been in the post for several years. Unimpressive credentials, and/or frequent and recent turnover in the CFO position can be a warning signal.

Active solicitation of venture capital by a company which has been in business for more than three years also can be a warning signal. A healthy, growing vendor will find ways to squeeze capital out of itself, either by increasing sales, cutting costs or, in some cases, raising prices. Unhealthy companies tend to keep reaching for venture capital. Frequent unsuccessful negotiations for the sale of the company is another sign of problems. Often sales fall through because the prospective new owners discover conditions which make the purchase unattractive.

Another good way to evaluate a vendor is to visit its plant. Take notice of how hard the employees appear to be working, how much product is sitting around waiting to be shipped, and even how organized and clean the facilities are. A vendor that refuses a plant visit may be seeking to conceal problems.

It isn't enough to seek to protect the library by requiring that source code for the software be placed in escrow in case the vendor goes under. The intent is that if the vendor can't support the software, the library can gain access to the code and support the software internally or with the help of a third-party organization. While most libraries' contracts with automation vendors have these escrow agreements, there is some question whether such contracts will hold up legally in the case of a bankruptcy. Bankruptcy laws are designed to protect the debtor, and could enable the vendor to avoid invocation of the escrow agreement as a way of protecting the rights to a product while efforts are made to regain financial stability.

Once a library is using a vendor's product, it should watch for signs of changing circumstances. If the library's system manager and operators notice a sudden turnover in the technical support people they deal with, that should be noted and reported to top management. An even more significant danger signal is the complaint from a vendor's employees that they are not being paid on time.

If there is a rapid turnover in management at the vendor, ask questions and try to find out why. Questions also should be asked if support services are falling off, or if new products are late in coming out--not a single slippage of a few months, but several successive slippages or a slippage of a year or more. Many big contracts are written with clauses that state the vendor must pay certain damages if products are not delivered or properly supported. But a vendor that is in trouble already may have so little money that collecting damages would be difficult and time consuming, and furthermore, might push the vendor into bankruptcy. Generally, remedies which allow a library to reduce payments scheduled to be made to a vendor can be effected much more quickly and economically.

If a vendor files for bankruptcy protection, the company will be required to file operating reports with the court. It would be in a library's best interest to obtain copies of these reports and keep abreast of what the vendor is doing to right itself.

In the final analysis, the best ways to minimize risk are to keep your options open and constantly look for alternate sources. Don't buy proprietary hardware and software which uses a proprietary operating system and/or programming language. Know which other vendors have software that runs on the same hardware, and know to what other hardware the software can be migrated.

Carl's uncover adds customers

CARL Uncover users which have included not only the libraries of the CARL Consortium, but also MARMOT, Arizona State University, Pikes Peak Library District and CCLind/Colorado Community Colleges, now include libraries on both coasts.

Two campuses of the Cal State System, San Jose and Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, have connected to UnCover using Cal State's existing X.25 network which connects faculty, staff and students at all 19 campuses. As a part of the project, CARL will custom tailor opening screens and menus for San Jose and Cal Poly.

At Cal Poly, UnCover's individual title and article records will be customized to include summary holdings statements and call numbers. Records appearing in the UnCover data base that are not available at Cal Poly will include a message referring the user to the Interlibrary Loan Department. At San Jose holdings information will be available later this calendar year, following completion of a sizeable retrospective conversion of serials information.

On the East Coast, the UnCover service will be provided to faculty and other users at Boston College through an existing Northern Telecom data switch which will allow both dial and dedicated terminal access. In addition to tailoring opening screens and menus for users, CARL and Boston College have agreed to provide a series of data bases for access, including a Boston College Journals List with associated article access, the complete UnCover data base, and the Union List of the Boston Library Consortium. Holdings information for Boston College will be loaded from machine readable Union List records.

CARL's UnCover service, with customized journal contents offered online through library or other organizational networks, now includes access to more than 7,000 journal titles and over 370,000 articles taken from the table of contents of individual journal issues. Available within 24 hours of issue receipt, CARL's search software allows retrieval of "recreated" online tables of contents, or searching by author names or by keywords within titles or abstracts of individual articles.

[Contact: CARL, 777 Grant, #304, Denver, Co 60203; (303) 861-5319; fax (303) 830-0103.]

CLSI Unix implementations lag

As of mid-September, 1969, a score of libraries which had contracted for new UNIX-based library systems from CLSI a year or more ago were still waiting for satisfactory completion of their installations. Among the problems have been non-performance and poor performance of the bibliographic utility interface (4-5 minutes for the transfer of a single record) non-functioning of the data base editing terminals, faulty interprocessor communication, and slow tape loading. Despite the long hours put in by CLSI field personnel, the situation appears to be improving at a glacial pace. As early as May of this year, the editors were told that all of the problems had been resolved. These assurances were repeated regularly-- while the libraries continued to have problems. Clearly, CLSI--and those of us who cheered its move away from a proprietary operating system to UNIX--seriously underestimated the difficulty of migrating the product to a new operating system.

Despite the problems encountered by recent customers, CLSI has just announced four new sales of Altos UNIX-based systems to the Delaware County (Ohio) District Library, Mary Riley Styles Public Library (Virginia), Lutheran General Hospital (Illinois) Library, and the Mid-Hudson (New York) Library System.

Libraries which contract with CLSI should be prepared for delays of several months, and may want to build remedies against delays into their contracts.

Dynix offers H-P

Dynix has moved aggressively into the Hewlett-Packard market, thus expanding the competition between Inlex and VTLS to three vendors. Among the new accounts which will be using H-P hardware with Dynix software are Oxnard Public Library and the Ventura County Library Services Agency.

H-P hardware has been a popular choice among municipal governments, many of which encourage its selection by independent agencies such as libraries. Dynix will continue to offer Ultimate, Tandem, and IBM hardware. The company also recently announced the availability of Sequent and Unisys hardware.

[Contact: Dynix, 151 E. 1700 South, Provo, UT 84606, (801) 375-2770; fax (801) 373- 1889.]

VTLS reports growth

VTLS brought its fiscal year to a close on June 30th. While revenue figures were not disclosed, the company did report 16 new installations and staff growth from 30 to 43 employees.

VTLS increased its international marketing effort in the past fiscal year, especially in Australia. Three Australian public libraries--Hawkesbury Shire, Inverall Shire, and Keilor City--purchased VTLS software for use on H-P 3000, 900 model computers which they share with their local governments.

A 20 percent increase in personnel has been projected for the 1989-90 fiscal year. Carl Lee, Director of User Services, has been promoted to the new position of Vice President for Operations. He will be responsible for the delivery and support of VTLS products and services.

[Contact: VTLS, Inc. 1800 Kraft Drive, Blacksburg, VA 24060, (703) 231-3605, fax (703) 231-3648.]

Profitable year for Geac

Geac Computer Corporation has recently distributed its annual report for the fiscal year ending April 30, 1989. The company as a whole realized revenues of C$74.8 million, resulting in pre-tax profits of C$5.2 million. Library Systems accounted for 32.3 percent of the total sales. The company as a whole did nearly 58 percent of its business in North America and the remaining 42 percent was throughout the rest of the world.

[Contact: Geac Computers, 250 Steelcase Road West, Markham, Ontario, L3R 1B3, Canada; (416) 475-0525.]

Philly offers fax service

FASTFACTS, a telefacsinile information service introduced by the Philadelphia Free Library in April, appears to be a h In the first four months, more than 600 requests were submitted.

By simply stopping in, or faxing a request, to any one of eight library locations, a library patron can obtain photocopies of materials from other fax-equipped libraries in the system, without making a trip across the city. The answer comes within 24 hours. The service is recommended for brief articles and reference information, and is limited to 10 pages per request.

Users have requested articles in journals kept only at the Central Library, articles in backfiles retained only at regional libraries, annual reports, directory listings, and scores of other copies from reference publications. The average transmission has been just over four pages.

A recent article in the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce's Memo to Members called FASTFACTS "a time saving device to help the business community get the facts they need without losing valuable tine and dollars."

[Contact: Thomas McNally, The Free Library of Philadelphia, Logan Square, Philadelphia, PA 19103; (215) 686-5424; fax (215) 563-3628.]

Improving peripheral reliability

Recent studies show that the most common reason for peripheral downtime (PCs, terminals, screen printers, etc.) is poor user maintenance.

Some of the most common problems associated with lack of proper maintenance are the following:

• Floppy disk head crashes caused by oxide build-up on read/write heads.
• Garbled or skipped data on the display screen caused by dirty disk drive read/write heads.
• Electrical shorting of machines caused by the buildup of static electricity on the screen and/or housing.
• Component burn-out caused by dirt improperly acting as an insulator of the components.
• Unwanted character repetition caused by keys jammed with dirt.
• Blurred screen data and eyestrain caused by dirty screens.
• Poor printer performance (including such things as garbled information, blurred and uneven-weight characters, slipping or jamming paper) caused by paper dust and dirt on printer elements and feeding mechanisms.

What is needed is scheduled routine cleaning, rather than cleaning only when equipment looks dirty. Most of the causes listed above--static electricity, smoke particles, skin oil from fingers, oxides, etc.--while not visible can cause serious problems.

Among the types of products available for regular cleaning of peripherals are:

• Portable compressed gas dusters that blow away contaminants from the keyboard, housing, diskettes, disk cartridge covers and other surfaces.
• Screen cleaning solutions and wipers or premoistened wiping pads that remove dirt, dust and oil blocking your vision. These products are usually formulated with anti-static agents.
• Screen filter cleaning solutions, especially those which are anti-streaking and leave behind no residue that could defeat the anti-refraction qualities of the filter.
• Read/write head cleaning disks and solutions. Just measure a precise amount of cleaning solvent onto the disk and place it in the disk drive. It cleans automatically.
• Keyboard cleaning products. These include pump-spray solvents, swabs and compressed air dusters, lint-free wiping cloths and premoistened cleaning pads.
• Static removers in the form of sprays and cleaning pads.
• Printer cleaners for removing contaminants from print elements, platens and housings. The most suitable are "non-porous."

Regular and proper use of these products can reduce peripheral downtime by 50 percent or more. The products can be purchased from computer and office supply dealers.

LC seeking redistribution fees

The Library of Congress has announced that it will require MARC Distribution Service subscribers to sign licensing agreements beginning January 1, 1990. In addition, subscribers to LC's tape service that redistribute the records may be required to pay a license fee in addition to the base subscription price. Initially, only licensees that redistribute more than 50 percent of the records in any single file are subject to the license fee. Redistribution outside the U.S. also would be subject to license fees.

While LC's announcement did not include a license fee schedule, OCLC has estimated that its liability could be as high as $6 million per year.

LC also will require all records that are redistributed to include copyright notices on the external surfaces of tape reels, cartridges, and optical discs, as well as displaying the copyright notice on the log-on screens.

Comments on the new policy should be addressed to Henriette Avram, Assistant Librarian for Processing Services, The Library Of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20540; (202) 707-5000.

OCLC-ILL turns ten

Ten years ago, OCLC brought up the first nationwide computerized interlibrary loan system. During the past decade, 22 million requests have been processed, and the annual rate has risen to more than 4 million requests.

There are now more than 300 million location listings in the data base. The Union ILL Subsystem supports 80 union lists for some 7,300 libraries. There are 30 Group Access arrangements (GACs) for 3,500 libraries--many of them not participants in OCLC's other programs.

OCLC is now working on a new system and network which will support subject access and fix transmission of documents. A collection analysis system has just been introduced.

The editors congratulate OCLC on the birthday of its ILL Subsystem and its continuing contributions to resource sharing.

Greene OKs AT&T publishing

U.S. District Judge Harold Greene has ruled that AT&T can begin providing electronic publishing services via its own transmission facilities, thus ending a seven-year restriction agreed upon in 1982 when the U.S. government settled its anti-trust suit against AT&T.

The court's July 28 memorandum lets AT&T begin exploring nationwide markets for audiotex, videotex, electronic mail, and other online information services.

AT&T has been linked with Dow Jones & Company, New York, in published reports that AT&T has dismissed as being "speculative." AT&T and Dow Jones reportedly are discussing a joint venture to provide information services that could be accessed by computers, telephones or cable television.

Citing a corporate policy not to discuss projects under study, AT&T declined comment on the judge's ruling. Industry sources are conjecturing, however, that AT&T likely will begin acquiring data base resources or negotiating alliances with established information providers in lieu of creating its own content.

Twayne's on CD-ROM

G. K. Hall has announced DiscLit: American Authors, the first full-text literature data base on CD-ROM. The CD-ROM contains the full text of 143 volumes in Twayne's United States Authors Series. The text includes concise critical introductions to the lives and works of major novelists, poets, dramatists, short-story writers, diarists, journalists, and other writers from colonial times to the present. Each volume provides discussions of major works, outlines its subject's historical context and influence, and includes a chronology of main events in the subject's life.

The data base will allow browsing and searching of the texts and indexes of each volume, including chapter heads and subheads, as well as full computer-generated keyword indexes. Researchers will be able to locate terms or phrases each time they appear. The Twayne texts are linked to over 120,000 related bibliographic subject records from the OCLC Online Union Catalog.

DiscLit: American Authors will be available in December 1989. It is priced at $895 before 30 November and at $995 thereafter.

[Contact: C. K. Hall, 70 Lincoln Street, Boston, MA 02111; (617) 423-3990.]

Software and documentation in CD-ROM

Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems plan to begin distribution of applications software on CD-ROM. Sun will put several competitive applications programs on one disk to allow a potential purchaser to browse through several programs on its own system before deciding. The others are believed to be planning the distribution of purchased programs and documentation on CD-ROM. Digital and H-P have been distributing their minicomputer operating systems on CD-ROM for some time.

The benefit to the companies is lower replication and distribution costs, some of which, it is hoped, would be passed on to the purchasers. The savings are significant: vendors can reproduce 10,000 copies of a CD-ROM at a cost of $2.50 each. A comparable number of magnetic tape reels, each of which has one-sixth the capacity, would take several weeks and cost $12.00 each.

New CD-ROM encyclopedia announced

Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corporation has demonstrated the Compton's MultiMedia Encyclopedia on CD-ROM. The new encyclopedia includes the full text of the New Compton's Encyclopedia, World Atlas, U.S. History Timeline, Topic Tree, Picture Explorer, Idea Search, and Title Finder. The information includes text, audio, and pictures.

The user can focus on an area of the World Atlas by clicking the mouse on a spinning globe or on an event on the U.S. History Timeline. The Topic Tree offers a list of subject headings and subheadings. Picture Explorer features thousands of full-color illustrations with related text. Idea Search retrieves articles related to any common phrase entered by the user; the software provides other terms linked to the initial words until the exact term is found. Title Finder provides an alphabetical listing of the encyclopedias's more than 5,000 articles. Full definitions from Webster's Intermediate Dictionary are available by clicking on any highlighted word in the text.

Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia requires an 286-based IBM compatible computer with a 20MB hard drive, 640KB of RAM, a VGA card and color monitor, a CD-ROM drive with controller card, a speech adapter and card, and a mouse. The product will be available in January 1990. Prices have not yet been announced.

[Contact: Britannica Centre, 310 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60604; (312) 347- 7943.]

CD-ROM for Mac

Microsoft Corporation has released a CD-ROM package for the Macintosh that incorporates four Microsoft office applications and a number of third-party programs. The collection is Microsoft's first CD-ROM offering for the Macintosh, although the company has other CD-ROM products for IBM-compatible PCs.

Microsoft Office, as the collection is called, includes Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation graphics software, word processing and electronic mail. It also incorporates software from 27 third-party developers, including a type library from Adobe Systems, Inc., clip art packages, text retrieval and document comparison software.

Apple lately has been trying to stimulate the CD-ROM market by offering discounts on CD-ROM drives to independent software vendors working with the upcoming Macintosh Os 7.0 and by encouraging dealers to demonstrate and stock CD-ROM products.

The CD-ROM package for the Macintosh includes multimedia presentations, including animated segments and voiceovers, that give an overview of the product and explain some of the functions. Also included are online documentation for the Microsoft applications and search facilities for the documentation.

The software is incorporated under a HyperCard-based graphic user interface. Microsoft Office for CD-ROM is available from retailers at a suggested retail price of $949.

Microfilming not dead

The Research Libraries Group (RLG) has been awarded over $2 million in grant funds by the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the second phase of the Great Collections Microfilming Project. The grant is the largest single award ever made by NEH's Office of Preservation in its continuing effort to save disintegrating materials in the nation's libraries. The project focuses on 13 collections important to humanities research, at nine of RLG's member libraries. The result will be the reformatting of over 34,000 volumes over the next three years.

The grant will expand the original Great Collections Microfilming Project, begun in October 1988 to support the filming of 27,000 volumes at seven RLG member libraries, to include the following institutions: Brown University, Columbia Teacher's College, Dartmouth College, Emory University, The New York Historical Society, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of Florida, and the University of Iowa. It will enable these institutions to establish successful preservation microfilming operations and to increase the number of qualified managers and technicians through a focused training program. At the outset of the project, key staff from each library will take part in a three-day orientation to learn how to manage the microfilming process.

Criteria used to select the collections included: value of the collection to scholars, extent of interest in the collection beyond its institutional home, and significance of preserving the collection in the context of a national preservation effort.

[Contact: Patricia McClung, Associate Director for Programs, The Research Libraries Group, Inc., 1200 Villa Street, Mountain View, CA 94041-1100; (415) 691-2236.]

Interfacing a WORM drive

Ten X Technology Inc., has announced a hardware device that enables optical WORM drives to be used on host SCSI buses without any operating system or application software additions or modifications. Called the Optical Conversion Unit (OCU), the hardware device has ROM-based features that remap and link written blocks and perform all indexing and data management functions required for the WORM to respond to the common command set for SCSI Winchester disks. The end result is a WORM drive that appears writable on any host system without adding or modifying software. The product is available now at a price of $1,295.

[Contact: Ten X Technology, 4807 Spicewood Springs Road, Building 3, Suite 3200, Austin, TX 78759; (512) 346-8360.]

Arcnet speed increased

Datapoint Corporation, the company which introduced the Arcnet local area network twelve years ago, has announced a dramatic increase in data transfer rate from 2.5 Mbit/sec of its initial product to 20 Mbit/sec for its new version. The new product should be available through dealers in November.

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