North America is gaining its third1 major bibliographic record utility server this month with the unveiling of SkyRiver.
SkyRiver Technology's Pre-launch Homepage
SkyRiver was founded by Jerry Kline, one of the principles behind Innovative Interfaces, Inc, and its president is Leslie Straus, former vice president for worldwide sales and marketing until 2006. The Library Journal article indicates that Kline is providing the financial backing of the effort, and that it shares office space and administrative support with Innovative Interfaces. No word yet about who the development partners are (although the article says that at least one is an ARL library) or what the subscription pricing will be. The SkyRiver website, though, does encourage people to come back to http://skyriver.com/ for the formal launch on Friday, October 9th.
For the record, the other major North American bibliographic utilities that I’m aware of are OCLC and LibLime’s ‡biblios.net, with the footnote talking about the possibility of the Open Library as a bibliographic utility. As with ‡biblios.net, I think it is useful to think about the introduction of SkyRiver to the bibliographic utility universe in the framework of Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovations. And in that framework, I’m not sure these efforts will work — while SkyRiver and ‡biblios.net are arguably quicker and more nimble than their OCLC counterpart — there isn’t much in the service offering that are not sustaining innovations in the field. Sure, the pricing model and the record re-use policies might be different, but the existence of SkyRiver and ‡biblios.net may just force OCLC to move in these directions as well. After that, there are no distinguishing factors. Clearly, this is going to need more thought…
Footnotes
- or fourth? Does Open Library count as a bibliographic utility? [↩]
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4 Comments
I don’t know. I have a really hard time believing that something associated with III is going to let folks give records away to non-subscribers.
’tis true, at least in my reading of the article: “Once received from SkyRiver, libraries can use the records in any way.” Washing one’s hands of the entire record ownership issue by saying they won’t be “owned” is certainly one way of dealing with the problem.
What’s really behind SkyRiver? A genuine market demand and opportunity, or a reaction to OCLC horning in on III customers?
In one sense, III is creating opportunities for alternative catalogs by giving poor service and charging high prices. Is OCLC doing the same thing for bibliographic utilities?
Some good questions, Caleb, and of course any answers from us on the outside would be pure speculation. I get the sense that Jerry thinks there is a real business opportunity here. It could be argued that he already has the basic technology of offering a cataloging system (Millennium) and the challenges of union databases (INN-Reach) at Innovative. And although the new venture is sharing administrative and technical support with Innovative Interfaces, the Library Journal article attempts to make clear — to my read of it — that SkyRiver is a new venture. Perhaps SkyRiver is licensing that technology and experience from Innovative. Or maybe the two are really closer than it the article would make them out to be. Time will tell, I suppose.
I do wonder if the incubation of SkyRiver can be traced back to the November 2008 policy change announced by OCLC. More than “OCLC horning in on III customers”, Jerry might have sense an opportunity to start this new venture to service over-served or un-served members of the library community (from the perspective of OCLC’s bibliographic utility services). That, in and of itself, would be a characteristic of a Christensen-defined disruptive innovation that may succeed. The backlash to the OCLC record policy could be read as a public indication of disenfranchisement with OCLC and readiness by the community to look at something else. That SkyRiver seems to be making a point of saying its records will not be bound by license agreements points to this.
I’ll be interested to hear about the subscription pricing policy and how the SkyRiver bibliographic utility will interact with existing ILSs (both Millennium and non-Millennium). That plus the added workflow and cost to set holdings in OCLC for those libraries that want to continue in OCLC resource sharing (which, I presume, will be most existing OCLC members that look at SkyRiver) will dictate how feasible this offering is. I’m looking forward to seeing more on their website Friday.
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