Map of/Excerpts from June 11, 2014 Interview of Kenton Andersen and Bruce Miller
Link to complete unedited audio recording of interview
(There seem to be problems with moving to a different place in the recording under Chrome; IE and Firefox are OK.)
[Highlights:
h:mm:ss
0:12:20 Bruce and Kenton marketing NOTIS, 1981-83
0:28:00 Library’s budgetary powerlessness; desire to get income from NOTIS
1:36:50 …“Every school should bring in money.” “Early days of universities doing technology transfer”
1:48:20 Three main things Jane did to make the system more attractive to the broader market.
2:14:40 Kenton: “I know of no other software company in which the salesperson had carte blanche”
2:20:05 Bruce: “Support of full MARC record”; tight integration (“in early ‘70’s they were all silo systems”)
2:34:15 Kenton: “I do mean that Geac [hardware] was “Brand X”…. ]
Complete map/excerpts
h:mm:ss
0:00:00 Introductions
0:00:00 Jerry
0:02:10 Kenton
0:07:00 Bruce
0:12:20 Bruce and Kenton marketing NOTIS, 1981-83
0:14:50 Kenton Circ, Venezuela Project, 1978-81; Spanish-language support
0:22:10 New Circ; self-service kiosks
· 1/8th of recording
0:24:20 Punched cards à barcodes; barcoding project
0:28:00 Library’s budgetary powerlessness; desire to get income from NOTIS
0:31:25 GTO
0:31:25 Visit to Stanford/RLIN; genesis of GTO
0:35:10 Catalogers/Catalog assistants
0:37:00 US MARC; Kenton’s work on tag-table module
0:39:50 IBM 4331 processor; moved from VSE, in library, to MVS, at UMS, 1988
IBM 9370 installed at UMS for NOTIS Office VSE support
0:41:15 Kenton’s NOTIS projects, 1984-88, while at UMS (besides GTO)
0:41:50 Customer data conversion
0:44:00 Growth from 8 customers (1983) to 100 (1988)
· ¼ of recording
0:46:00 Kenton’s involvement with z39.50; OSI; NOTIS VSE àMVS conversion (1981-2)
0:49:00 U. Florida / FCLA
0:52:00 Kenton installs: Clemson, Auburn, Washington University (1981-4)
0:53:15 Jane’s hiring
0:53:50 Kenton: work on LUIS (OPAC) module; origin of “Guide Screen” concept; “epiphany”;
Author-title-subject index; compression
0:59:30 OPAC transaction log
1:00:50 NUL computer room; 4331; quick response compared to modem-connection
1:06:15 Lee Ellis; library budget
· 3/8 of recording
1:08:10 IBM macro-level / command-level; CWA (Common Work Area);
Telex 476 (special library terminal); “no more than 24K of RAM”; even under CICS, only 64K; Small footprint
1:15:50 Most proud of having done …
1:15:50 Kenton
1:16:30 Bruce
1:17:50 Why no NOTIS ILL module?
1:22:10 Velma, NUGM 1993 speech … frustration with course of events; “dollar signs in eyes of University Librarian and University Administration”; “marketing people want commitments that suit their marketing purposes”.
1:27:00 “marketing operation” began in 1983 with Jane’s hiring
1:28:00 John as driving force? 1980 EDUCOM report;
1:30:00 Library as “profit center”
· ½ of recording
1:32:00 Bruce: Velma instilling “systems analysis” mentality in library staff
1:33:40 Bruce: “Behind the scenes was the strong unrelenting support of John McGowan”; “Change from old European ‘bookman’ model….”
1:36:50 John not factoring Jane into the equation?
“Every school should bring in money.” “Early days of universities doing technology transfer”
1:41:40 “Certainly the [marketing] model changed with Jane.” NU’s problem with “unrelated business income” solved by creating NOTIS Systems Inc. Endowed positions in library created by sale; $10+ million in 2014 dollars.
1:48:20 Three main things Jane did to make the system more attractive to the broader market.
1:48:20 1) Real-time bibliographic interface
1:49:20 Bruce on GTO
1:53:05 Central State’s OCLC Transfer
· 5/8 of recording
1:54:35 GTO improvements: error handling; robustness; handling of RLIN (and other vendors); COMARC, Cooperative MARC Cataloging
2:01:20 2) Keyword/Boolean
2:01:20 Importance of
2:04:45 Difficulties implementing
2:06:10 “Wave in the marketplace of people wanting keyword/Boolean”
2:09:45 3) Packaging: training, documentation, and support
2:13:00 “Jane committed to things without telling anyone”; prioritization of fixes
2:14:40 “I know of no other software company in which the salesperson had carte blanche”
2:15:20 To noble-minded people, the greatest satisfaction comes from the creation of a really good system which serves their clientele (Northwestern University Library) … really well.
· ¾ of recording
2:17:10 “in terms of actual profit”
2:17:30 Jerry: Keyword/Boolean is a very interesting and challenging function which I think Jim and Kenton could have done very well.
2:18:30 J: The indexes are 10 times the size of the bib data; speed/efficiency really important.
2:20:05 Reasons for NOTIS’ success….
“Support of full MARC record”
Bruce: Tight integration (“in early ‘70’s they were all silo systems”)
2:22:50 K: “I don’t recall many other vendors having strong authority-handling capabilities”
2:25:25 K: “It’s about 50/50 [between IBM hardware/software & NOTIS programming efficiency]”. By early ‘90’s minis had caught up; but efficiency of Assembler code was still a real advantage.
2:28:45 K: Marketing; 100% of ARLs could have benefitted from NOTIS; overseas sales: “missed opportunity”?
2:32:00 “What would have happened if Jane hadn’t come into the picture”
2:32:35 How important was running on IBM?
2:33:30 K: “I’m not aware of too many institutions that were trying to do administrative computing on anything other than IBMs.”
2:34:15 K: “I do mean that Geac was “Brand X”. No university bought Geac hardware --except for the library.”
2:36:00 J: 2/3 of revenue from MVS sites (running on shared computers)?
2:39:00 K: Another advantage: “The fact that NOTIS did not start out as a commercial product.” Jim and Velma were important factors in success.
· 7/8 of recording
2:41:20 Natural proselytizing: “NUL staff moved to other libraries.”
2:42:15 How about NOTIS giving customers the source code?
2:43:30 K: Distribution of object code: “You need a pretty good-sized client base to take that on.”
2:44:30 K: “For products at a certain price point it [distributing source] is definitely the way to go.”
2:45:30 K: “It was licensed source code [different than open source code]. That was, at the time, IBM’s business model.”
2:46:40 K: [By getting away from source code distribution] “IBM shot themselves in the foot.”
2:47:10 Use of Assembler.
2:50:00 K: “People who’ve worked with other computers’ assembly language don’t appreciate that IBM Assembler was actually pretty easy to code.”
2:50:40 J: Use of comments on most lines made the code quite intelligible – even for someone who knows nothing about Assembler.
2:51:55 B: “Jim was actually far-sighted in picking the mainframe Assembler. “
2:54:15 J: Good programming (in any language) involves the creation and extensive use of efficient subroutines. “And I think NOTIS had some very efficient subroutines.”
2:58:15 K: “Every system that’s been really successful has had a certain ‘sweet spot’.”
3:02:10 “NOTIS Horizon” became Voyager.
“There are a lot of NOTIS-like features in Aleph.”
“Good features become the standard; they become known….”