An interesting and provocative post came through on the NGC4LIB list the other day. (In case you don't know, that stands for Next Generation Catalogues for Libraries.) Entitled A Thought Experiment, Joe Lucia from Villanova University puts forth an argument for open source systems in libraries.
He covers the oft-trod ground of financial benefit of open source:
Within Palinet, for instance, we have a small regional public library system that has successfully made the transition to Koha and has been able to re-direct funds that used to go into software support to local initiatives. There's also a public library that has transitioned its public computing environment to Linux, at considerable savings and with reduced support & acquisition costs for technology. The success models are there and developing best practice frameworks and implementation support methods that will scale will not be rocket science.
What really piqued my interest was how he focuses on the people-potential issue:
What if, in the U.S., 50 ARL libraries, 20 large public libraries, 20 medium-sized academic libraries, and 20 Oberlin group libraries anted up one full-time technology position for collaborative open source development. That's 110 developers working on library applications with robust, quickly-implemented current Web technology -- not legacy stuff. There is not a company in the industry that I know of which has put that much technical effort into product development. With such a cohort of developers working in libraries on library technology needs -- and in light of the creativity and thoughtfulness evident on forums like this one -- I think we would quickly see radical change in the library technology arena.
It's inspiring to see people in this business we call library technology thinking big. But here's the thing - I don't think this is just a thought exercise. It's absolutely possible. Libraries are built on the idea of knowledge-sharing, and open source is a logical extension of that.
Villanova has started down this track with their support and release of VuFind, a pretty cool Open Source catalogue. The National Library has a few Open Source projects out there (notably the Web Curator Tool and the Metadata Extraction Tool) as well as building some products built on an Open Source base (Papers Past, anyone?) And, if discussions around here are any indicator, that's the metaphorical tip of the metaphorical iceberg.
It won't happen tomorrow. It won't be without its pain points. But I think if we can be realistic about our expectations and imaginative about our possibilities, we'll all benefit.
1 comments:
This reminds me a demo I saw last for an open source collections management system. "Unlike other collections management applications, OpenCollection is a true web-application. All cataloging, search and administrative functions are accessible via the Internet using common web-browser software, making cataloguing by distributed teams and online access to collections information simple, efficient and inexpensive."
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