Harry M. Kriz

Gardening and Working

On a clear morning in September 1998, Blaktopp and I were in our garden getting some raspberries for our breakfast. My aerobic garden grows at 2,100 feet above sea level in the superb mountain climate of Blacksburg, VA. "Mountain Grown" vegetables from asparagus to zucchini nourish body and mind. My homemade raspberry jam sweetens my breakfast, and frozen raspberries brighten my dinner on a long winter's night. Blaktopp continued his work in the garden, even helping me dig the new asparagus bed in April 2002. Sadly, he passed away in 2005 at the age of 18, shortly after helping me establish my garden for that year. Among his last photos is the one on my Aerobic Garden 2004 page.

To support my vegetable habit, I work in the University Libraries at Virginia Tech, where I hold the rank of professor and where my current job title is Director of Interlibrary Services. Under this and many other job titles at Virginia Tech I have been blessed with the freedom to explore new technologies and to implement pilot projects with those technologies. 

In May 1996, I was asked to serve as Head of our Interlibrary Loan Department. Through some marvelous teamwork, and by careful analysis using a 24-foot, virtual flow chart, we transformed interlibrary loan and document delivery into a paper-free, highly automated environment. We designed and implemented the interlibrary loan software product that we named ILLiad.

In 2005, I received the Virginia Boucher-OCLC Distinguished ILL Librarian Award in recognition of my "significant and sustained contributions to the interlibrary loan community." I am grateful to the American Library Association's Boucher Award Committee and to all those who contributed to my selection. I am proud to be included in the company of such excellent ILL colleagues who won the award in previous and subsequent years.

OCLC, Inc. liked ILLiad so much that on October 16, 2000, the company announced that it would become the sole distributor and licensor of the ILLiad software. You can read more about OCLC's involvement with ILLiad at the OCLC ILLiad web site. As of December 2006, the software was in use by more than 850 library systems in North America and Asia, including the majority of America's largest research libraries. 

A brief history of ILLiad's spread through the ILL world is available at http://www.ill.vt.edu/AboutILLiad.htm. You can read details about how we developed ILLiad and brought it into production in

"ILLiad: Customer-Focused Interlibrary Loan Automation"
published in
Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Information Supply, Vol. 8, No.4, pp. 31-47 (1998).

[Download a preprint of this paper:
ILLiadPaper.pdf (48,918 bytes).]

I discussed some of our work with ILLiad and my development philosophy in an interview published in Virginia Libraries, Vol. 45, No. 4, pp. 4-6 (Oct. - Dec., 1999) and in an article I wrote with the title "Customer In-Reach and Library Strategic Systems: The Case of ILLiad," Public Services Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2002). (PDF version CustomerInReach.pdf, 204,259 bytes).

On the Web

My professional interests lie in improving library public services through end-user computing. Since the mid-1980's, I've been analyzing library services to produce strategic computing environments that transform back office cost centers into public service assets, an approach I call "library in-reach."  As an evangelical computerist, my days are full and interesting. I like Alan Kay's philosophy, embodied in his statement about working at Xerox PARC: "...it was fun, and therefore inherently worth doing."

I remain amazed at the power of the Web, which enables me to be an international author and publisher. I founded HTML Just Say No to help others become personal publishers on the Web.

In the world of the Web, I launched my first HTTP server on September 16, 1994. The home page Always Learning is dedicated to lifelong learners. Its professional purpose is to support continuous learning and improvement in the Virginia Tech Libraries.

Other Web projects include the eclectic and erratically maintained Pages O' the Day. This is a pointer to various Web pages that interest me and some friends at the moment. My Internet Gardening page frequently attracts one to two thousand readers each month.

As a teacher I introduce others to the power of computing and networked information. I wrote "Teaching and Publishing in the World Wide Web" in 1994 to show professionals in any field how to use their desktop computer to distribute their knowledge to a world-wide audience.

Teaching and Networking

In the broader Internet world, I am the author of "Windows and TCP/IP for Internet Access." This tutorial guides the beginner who seeks to browse the Internet from a desktop computer. The paper was included on PC Week's list of primers and tutorials useful to information technology professionals who must rely on serial connections to the Internet. The list was published in PC Week, Vol. 12, No. 13, p. 13 (April 3, 1995).

In our local networking world I created the Virginia Tech Library's original CD-ROM network and first computer network of any kind. In 1989, just networking CD-ROMs and creating remote access through an IBM/ROLM digital switch was considered an interesting achievement. My colleagues and I described our work in

"A LANtastic CD-ROM Network with Remote Access through a Campus Digital Voice/Data Network"
published in
Library LANs: Case Studies in Practice and Application, M. Breeding, Editor, Meckler Pub. Co., Westport 1992, Chapter 9, pp. 116-136

and in

"An Environmental Approach to CD-ROM Networking Using Off-the-shelf Components"
published in
CD-ROM Professional, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 24-31 (July 1991).

It seems like only yesterday...

In the world of mainframe library computing, I am the designer and implementer of an automated electronic journal management system. The book orders tracking system that I first developed in 1984, and refined over several years, was enhanced in 1995 and served as the Virginia Tech Library's acquisitions system for several years. I also created a newspaper index database and a media database on the campus mainframe. These systems have full-screen, query-by-example interfaces that I designed and wrote to eliminate the need for any user training. Descriptions and source code for the mainframe SPIRES-based systems are available. Articles describing my work are indexed in the ERIC database.

In the world of science librarianship, I am the author of several papers on reference service, collection development, and citation analysis. Such were my interests in the 70's and 80's.

In the world of solid state physics. . .

Well, that was long ago and far away. You can find my papers on nuclear magnetic resonance in glassy materials indexed in Physics Abstracts and cited in Science Citation Index. Best wishes to all my friends who hung with us in PJ's labs. I do miss the Go games with Mann Jang.