Why I envy Mr. Safe
The other day, Tim Bray had a conversation with Mr. Safe. Then Jon Udell spoke with him. And finally a quick talk with Joshua Allen. Why do I envy him? Because he gets to decide how to exactly what he wants implemented and when.
In the library world, things don’t work that way. I talked about this a few weeks ago. As far as I know, Koha is the only system even considering implementing RSS. For those of us not using Koha, we will have to wait for our library software vendor to decide to implement it. Right now, we are waiting (or at least some of us are) to see how long it takes to get the newly-recognized ISO standard NCIP implemented. NCIP is based on the earlier 3M SIP Protocol. It took some time, but by going through the NISO, they created something every vendor could pretty much agree on and agree to implement. Of course, we don’t know when, since some vendors are still working on Z39.50, which was originally adopted in 1988. I look forward to seeing what comes of the RSS/Echo Movements, but I am not going to hold my breath until I see either of them output in a form my patrons can use. And I suspect that libraries are not the only institutions who are in that state.
