Enter the Open Source ILS
Lori Ayre writes about Ten Years of Learned Helplessness Coming to an End and how the proprietary ILS has put up roadblocks that have stopped librarians from being able to do what they want:
It’s ridiculous that libraries are stuck with the systems they’ve got without options to determine what changes get made or even the access or privileges that would allow them to make the changes for themselves.
Enter Open Source library systems.
This all changes when libraries start building, supporting, and contributing to the development of their own software. Georgia PINES and the Koha libraries proved it could be done. Now, it is time we all got involved.
Exactly!! It’s time for people to get involved!! I head from librarians all the time that wish that they could switch to open source, but their IT staff or administration won’t let them. That doesn’t mean that they can’t participate in the community and make improvements that might change people’s minds. Lori has a great list of ways to get involved and I hope she doesn’t mind me quoting it in it’s entirety here:
1) develop strong IT staff in your library or consortia who can read code, write code, beta test, write specs, and/or find bugs.
2) get over the fear of Open Source. Do some reading about how Open Source development works (read The Cathedral and the Bazaar). Find out about the migration and support options available from vendors like Equinox, LibLime, Care Affiliates.
3) jump in and play. Koha and Evergreen can be downloaded and you can take a look for yourself. That’s one of the amazing things about Open Source. You get to look it over inside and out. No big surprises three months after you’ve negotiated a $200,000-$300,000 deal.
4) talk amongst yourselves. Open Source projects rely on a community of users who are involved in the product. We don’t want Liblime and ESI to replace the other ILS vendors. We want to control the products ourselves and that means getting very much involved. Find the product that excites you and hook up with similarly situated libraries. For example, the Evergreen community is leading the way for large consortia (see http://open-ils.org/) , King County (WA) is heading up the effort for large, high-volume libraries (check out their OSS4PL site). There were many meetings ALA 2008 in Anaheim focused on Open Source, and more are planned at Midwinter, LITA, Access and other conferences so you isn’t hard to get plugged in somewhere.
Read Lori’s post here and get involved!!