Notes from a presentation by Karen Schneider

on open source library systems

Carmel McInerny

14 November 2008

Introduction

Karen Schneider is community librarian for Equinox Software, the support and development company for Evergreen open source library software. Evergreen was developed for Georgia Public Library Service about two years ago and is now running in 275 mainly public libraries in the US and Canada.

Her talk was titled ‘The nature of open: How open source and Web 2.0 bring us back to the roots of librarianship’.

I heard the presentation at the State Library of Victoria where it was the last in the CAVAL-VALA 30th Anniversary Series also presented in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide. The talks are available from the CAVAL website. You can read others’ accounts of the talks at Kathryn Greenhill’s blog and Michelle McLean’s blog.

This presentation is important because it has promoted discussion around Australia about the limitations of vendor library management systems and the potential of open source – an excellent precursor to disseminating information in Australia about the OLE Project.

Schneider opened her presentation with a description of how she heard of the Obama presidential win in Sydney and her prediction that these political events will lead to more sharing opportunities across the world.

Librarians have a history of being innovators

Librarians have a history of seeing capabilities and being innovative: using mylar to enable more collection lending, opening up collection shelves for browsing; writing software code for library automation back in the 70s, developing AACR2 to assist going online. However there has been a change from innovation being driven by librarians, to products being developed by vendors. Schneider used the chronological graph by Marshall Breeding (a partner in the OLE Project) of the history of mergers and acquisitions to emphasise the current monopoly by a few vendors.

Problems with vendor ILMS products

  • software is silo based
  • not catering to different or unique library workflows
  • hard to get vendors to be innovative
  • not meeting changing patron needs eg mobile devices
  • library software is driving library policy
  • difficult to share any software developed inside a library
  • fear that ‘no way you could write library management system software’, but they’ve forgotten the history of librarians being innovative.

Evergreen

Some libraries do not need commercial support (like Equinox) to use the software; part of renaissance of development in the library environment eg Koha (developed in NZ and supported by LibLime) and OPALS (for school libraries); acquisitions and serials modules to be released early next year; working on new OPAC; are strapped for developers - will hire from Australia.

Open source software in real life

  • See Eric S Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar for early discussion of open source (best after about p.100); also his FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) tactic explanation saying that open source only used in third world countries as others too scared to move away from IMB, Microsoft etc
  • lack of maturity is not necessarily a bad thing in software development
  • to say that open source is cheaper to implement than closed software is a dangerous assumption - it isn’t free as in beer, but it’s free as in kittens - there are resource implications and libraries may need to pay for a support company such as Equinox or LibLime
  • open source is amenable to rapid application development because it’s not stymied by silos - it’s a broad development environment; Evergreen’s self check software implemented in weeks
  • open source is easier to customise ie parallel requirements across many libraries - don’t have to worry about vendor timetable
  • easy to have partnerships with others
  • a proprietary licence doesn’t pay for future development
  • interoperability with open standards and data means it’s easy to get software to work with other systems eg VuFind
  • not locked into a company - even support companies are paid for support and/or development, not proprietary code
  • problem with open source is good documentation is not traditionally available but with Evergreen, Mellon Foundation has given US$50,000 which is being used to engage four documentation contractors working in tandem
  • open source has a network effect with librarians contributing concerns and needs and more librarians developing code
  • they have found the more libraries the more development input but it is a small community esp where there is a public library focus

Closing remarks

It has been several decades since librarians have been involved in software development as we have handed it over to third parties; so we’ve forgotten how to write it and assumed the only way is to purchase software ie helplessness.

Schneider has found personal visits are essential in her work in Georgia as librarians are reluctant to contribute to lists and online discussion forums; however they are generally bubbling with ideas for development; her job is to reeducate librarians in contributing to development.

A small library who introduced a biometrics station, ie finger printing to check out books, is a great example of librarians’ resourcefulness.

Questions

With customised implementations how much of a problem are updates? Yes, forking means centralisation is encouraged esp by the support and development companies.

Interested in the scalability of Evergreen. The product is scaleable for any size consortia; FulfILLment is an Evergreen ILL consortia product scheduled for 2010 release.

Talk by Lizanne Payne

Co-presenter in the series was Lizanne Payne, Executive Director Washington Research Libraries Consortium. Her talk was titled ‘The future of library collections: Access and stewardship in a networked world’. Her focus was changes in library collecting, storage and retrieval due to ubiquitous online books, ongoing consortial agreements amongst libraries especially for journal subscriptions and advances in retrieval technology.

The British Library has a designated role to store the archive and preservation copy of journals. This strategy will free up over 100km of shelf space over 5 years and includes funds to deaccession holdings in member libraries.

She also spoke of the relative costs of retrieval systems such as US$10 per volume using bin delivery (to be used in the new Macquarie University building for 80% of its storage). This is compared to US$3/volume for cherry picker type retrieval.