Library open source solution vendor, LibLime, announced yesterday that they and CARE Affiliates

“have entered into a definitive agreement to sell select assets of CARE Affiliates to LibLime. The sale will include select products, related services and domain names along with associated service contracts. Final closing is scheduled for August 2008.”

Like CARE Affiliates, LibLime provides open source solutions to libraries, and the acquisition should, according to the press release, “ensure the continuation of [CARE's] products/services well into the future.”

See Carl Grant’s blog article of this morning for his thoughts on the move.

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[ Editor's note: Once upon a time, when I was doing much more software development than I am doing today, I found myself with a project where I had to deal with the differences between SRU and SRW. The world of web services and their related standards was quite mysterious to me at the time. Carl Grant, President of CARE Affiliates, reviews an essay in Christopher Cox's book about federated search that discusses these two standards in the context of a number of standards of interest to the federated search and library community. While you’ll need to read the actual essay to understand the standards, Carl Grant does a fine job of reviewing how the chapter treats SRU, in particular.

Given the quality of the essays in Mr. Cox’s book plus the severe lack of any books related to federated search, I highly recommend the book. You can purchase a copy of Mr. Cox’s book of essays from the publisher, Taylor & Francis, who donated the review copies, by calling their Customer Service department, Monday-Friday 9 A.M. – 5 P.M. EDT, at (800) 634-7064.

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In Part I of this series I wrote about a number of issues with the RFP process that increases the cost of doing business for federated search vendors and raises the cost of procurements for libraries. In this article, I consider ways of mitigating the costs. Much of the information for this series comes from an article written by Carl Grant: Choose wisely: making the library’s money work for the library in the system procurement process.

Grant makes the important point that vendors and libraries must collaborate to bring costs down. If libraries insist on continuing to use the current RFP process then vendors will be forced to use it as well. The first step in this collaboration is for the library to clearly articulate its goals to the vendor and to have both parties consider what needs the vendor can realistically meet. This also requires the vendor to be honest and up-front about what it can reasonably deliver. While Grant’s article is biased in its outlook - libraries are made to look like the bad guy - I’ll state that vendors own some of the responsibility. If vendors were really clear and honest about what they could deliver, on what schedule, and at what cost, then libraries wouldn’t be grilling them so hard.

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[ Editor's note: Carl Grant, President of CARE Affiliates, was one of the volunteers who took me up on my offer to review several chapters of Christopher Cox’s book about federated search. Following is his review of one of the chapters: “Developing the Right RFP for Selecting Your Federated Search Product: Lessons Learned and Tips from Recent Experience” by Jerry Caswell and John Wynstra.

I appreciate that this review comes from a seasoned federated search vendor; Carl Grant has been in the library automation industry for a long time and raises an important concern about the RFP process, how his experience is that the current RFP model doesn’t really serve the customer or vendor, and he touches on what he sees as a better approach.

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Paula Hane, Information Today, Inc.’s news bureau chief and editor of NewsBreaks, published a nice in-depth article about the acquisition of WebFeat by ProQuest. Aside from the ProQuest press release, Library Journal’s coverage of the story, and my own article, there hasn’t been tremendous coverage of the acquisition. Hane’s article adds some detail. Also, Carl Grant, President of CARE Affiliates, expresses his view of the acquisition in light of the OpenTranslators partnership that involves WebFeat, CARE, and Index Data.

Of particular interest, Hane reported the reactions of a number of people who were knowledgeable about the federated search industry, including Marshall Breeding, Frank Cervone, Cheryl LaGuardia, and myself. The four viewpoints (at the end of the article) of what the acquisition means for the industry are quite valuable.

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Carl Grant, President of CARE Affiliates, left a comment on my recent OpenTranslators announcement raises questions post. The comment refers to an in-depth response that Grant posted on his blog. I’m writing this post to bring attention to Grant’s response, to encourage everyone to read it and join in the conversation, and to respond to the response.

The response is well thought out and well articulated. Writing many posts myself I appreciate the time Mr. Grant spent crafting his response, in particular on a Saturday night. This shows quite a dedication to his company and to this industry. I agree with the majority of the content of the response and I still have several concerns.

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Yesterday, CARE Affiliates issued a press release announcing a new product offering. A snippet of the announcement is this:

CARE Affiliates announced a new product, in conjunction with its strategic partners, Index Data and WebFeat, called OpenTranslators. OpenTranslators is intended to reshape the way libraries select and use federated search and metasearch technology. OpenTranslators will allow libraries to use the federated search interface of their choice to access over 10,000 databases using SRU/SRW/Z39.50.

I have lots of questions about the offering but here is what is clear. CARE is a company in the business of providing products and services to libraries and information centers based on open source software. Index Data develops, customizes and supports open source information retrieval software, including federated search software. WebFeat is a developer of proprietary federated search software. WebFeat has a large number of translators (connectors to SRU/SRW/Z39.50 databases). CARE, in collaboration with Index Data, has developed a gateway to provide access to these WebFeat translators.

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