An Exchange with Sirsi

some back and forth
sparked from a link I posted

www.librarian.net/essays/sirsi.html


20aug04


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Intro & Background

On the 17th of August I posted a link that had been sent to me by two different readers. It concerned the "Hot Links" section of an OPAC that contained a link to The WISH List a fundraising and awareness site for pro-choice Republican women. All Sirsi iBistro OPACs carried this link on their main page for a week My readers and I were concerned that this repesented some behind-the-scenes political lobbying in ways which were, to my mind, inappropriate. The link appeared with two other unrelated links so this was not a situation of having a link from one side paired with a link from the other side.

My post said this

You all know how much I love political activism, but is it strictly kosher for an OPAC vendor to be making partisan political statements with the links they add to content-included catalogs? Check the Hot Links section on the Lackawanna County System, for example.

The next day I received this email via my comments form...

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message: Jessamyn:

I love yor blog and have read it for years. However, a gentle reminder regarding the posting on August 17th about Sirsi and partisan OPAC's. Sirsi the OPAC vendor isnt responsible for the content selections on the Lackawanna iBistro. We do not suggest what websites they highlight or what they do with these cataloged sites. So, one of two things is happening in this case, the library has set up their content to randomly choose web sites to highlight every week (or day or month) OR the library has made a conscious decision to highlight this site in order to provide balanced selections for their communities. Just like Sirsi Doesn't choose the books that are in library catalogs, we don't choose the other stuff libraries choose to put on their websites. The fact that it is highlighted has absolutely nothing to do with us. Its akin to saying we are at fault for providing a book cover that a user finds objectionable. We neither select nor censor. Hope this helps clarify before folks get too misinformed.

Cheers,

[name omitted]
VP, Sirsi

This confused me since it was not my understanding about how these link lists worked at all. I did a little research and responded with the following email...

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Hi, thanks for the note. Our library OPAC is also a Sirsi product

http://170.222.248.164/uhtbin/webcat

It is my impression, and the impression of others who I work with, that the "hot sites" feature is basically a feature of IBistro which includes its top three selected sites on the home pages of *every* OPAC that has chosen to include this content option as part of their OPAC package.

It is my understanding that Sirsi has a relationship with a content provider -- LibraryHQ -- who creates a database of these links. Selections from this database appear in the "hot sites" section on the OPAC home page and are automatically fed to every library who does not configure their OPAC to not provide them. In other words, the "out of the box" configuration of the Sirsi iBistro client with this content option will show these links on the main page of the library's OPAC screen. This relationship is more obvious when you see libraries running what I think is older versions of the software as in this example

http://ibistro.rdpl.org/

Here is the press release from LibraryHQ describing the relationship

http://www.libraryhq.com/press/091400.html

If I am understanding this client relationship incorrectly, please let me know, but a quick Google Search indicates that the "hot sites" feature is a fairly standard one on the iBistro OPAC, and that it features identical sites on OPACs nationwide, these links are not chosen by the libraries and do not exist in any database created by the individual libraries.

My impression is that they appear through some sort of a content relationship with Sirsi and the company [LibraryHQ] who is creating those lists of links that change weekly. I stand by my assertion that the "hot sites" list is a poor place to exercise partisan politics, whether Sirsi is doing this or whether they have a content provider that does this through their gateway as part of a standard installation of their product. It is not my impression that the selection of the three links that appear on the "hot sites" list is random. If I am wrong about this set of asserions and inferences, I would also like to know that. Please keep in touch if that is the case.

jessamyn

I figured this would either spark some debate or help me get my facts straight if I had them incorrect. I wound up getting not one but two responses to my email....

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One from my original correspondent

Thanks Jessamyn:

I think I might have been misinformed. I asked and was told that we didn't select and now I am told that we have two staff who do select. This particular site came from Librarian's Index to the Internet. I'll have one of our product managers give you the full answer.

I am sorry if I mislead you.

And one from the Sirsi Product Manager who was very concerned about the implication that someone there might be up to something partisan.

Jessamyn,

I am completely to blame for the misinformation passed on to Stephen and subsequently passed on to you today. I am the Product Manager that oversees the content we provide, and I just simply did not think through my response as thoroughly as I should have before I responded. At the time I wrote the response, I was truly thinking this is how it worked. There is simply no other defense for myself than I was wrong. As soon as I figured out my mistake, I let Stephen know and that was just about the time you responded.

We do, indeed, have people internally who pick these websites on a weekly basis, however I have to assure you that there is absolutely NO intention of partisan politics. I can say that because I personally know the individual who chose this site, and this site does not represent that person's political opinion. For this week's sites she took a look at both the USA Today and the Librarians Index to the Internet. This is the description from LII:

The WISH List [linked for the sake of brevity]

Please, please, please, you can call me irresponsible for giving you the wrong information today. You can fault us for not providing a site for each political view point. You can also make the argument that we should never put anything even remotely politically-opinionated on the Hot Sites, but I beseech you to believe me when I say there was NO intention of putting forth any particular belief system. There are plenty, plenty, plenty of us in this company who have differing political opinions (and are politically active for that matter). Many of us here at Sirsi (including myself and the person who chose the web site) have MLS's and have been practicing librarians in the past, and we understand that it is of the utmost importance to be non-partisan.

Again, I apologize for giving you the wrong information earlier today. I also apologize for the fact that it appeared we were being politically partisan. I would be more than happy to talk to you about this over the phone, but please, understand there was no subversion at all meant in any of this. I can't guarantee that we won't offend anyone with our decisions in the future because people have varying belief systems, however we will endeavor to be more balanced.

Please feel free to contact me, and thank you for your time.

[name omitted]
Sirsi Public Services Product Manager

I wrote them both back saying essentially "No harm, no foul" but I figured I'd post the exchange here [with the product manager's permission] so that people could gain a little more insight into the strange world of value-added content relationships.

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The End