WHAT DO YOU SUPPORT?

["Hamaker, Charles" <cahamake@uncc.edu>]

Having just had another example brought forcibly to mind, (it's 
not the first and won't be the last) I wonder if publishers and 
the online platforms they decide on and support could take being 
prodded a bit.

In my institution we support on the campus MACs, LINUX and 
Windows machines running a variety of apps. We are agnostic and 
there may well be other flavors on campus. This means that we 
need variable support capabilities from our vendors.

I just had an experience with a vendor who ONLY supports Internet 
Explorer AND adobe 9.1.  It's been a bit of a nightmare all day 
long between versions, activeX controls, operating system 
questions, etc, all the things that can go wrong have gone wrong. 
For those in the know... if those apps go bad, its back to the 
drawing board! And they tell us they don't support firefox at 
all.

Needless to say, with the variety of systems operating on campus, 
this vendor's products are at a real disadvantage and I have had 
a strong recommendation from library systems that we not purchase 
products that aren't themselves agnostic when it comes to 
platforms and software combinations.

Why do vendors and publishers tie themselves to a single system 
or limited apps? Is it because someone convinced them it's easier 
to say, "not my problem" even when it very much is their 
problem?

Just asking

Chuck Hamaker