fatvegan

What is it about library catalogues that means that always have to be a dog's breakfast? I've never seen a good one. Is it because they are so complicated and the poor tech staff at libraries have to hack them up so much to get them to work properly? How can Flickr, with 10 or so guys, be so brilliant and easy to use, while library catalogues which, combined, probably have thousands of programmers and designers working on them are so painful? Is it because there is, and can only ever be, one library catalogue software provider and so there's no competition? All the sites seem to be basically the same and as bad as each other.

I'm sure they're difficult things to build, but those guys have had a long time to get it right. And it's not like there's no money in it. There must be pretty sweet economies of scale in that business.

Has anyone ever used a good system?