OpenRFP now has more than 2500 functional descriptions in its database, why so many?
We expect this number to continue to increase as librarians and vendors continue to differentiate and understand their needs. For example, several hundred new descriptors related to RFID have appeared as we added coverage for this technology. In the abstract we might agree that many of the specific functionality questions seem irrelevant, but relevance is often a matter of understanding what’s going on. Libraries don’t mean to ask irrelevant questions, but the attempts of libraries to define what’s important, matched by corresponding vendor behavior to “hide” functionality (perhaps to keep competitors unaware, or in a vain attempt to deny that it does not exist) has brought us to this point. OpenRFP wants to work with vendors to present their functionality in terms that represent an efficient system for providing standard answers to questions and move on to the issues of how things get done with the software and why the libraries should care. When this is accomplished the library has r
