Howard County has been all over talking (and writing) about their successful use of open source, not they’re announcing their own contribution to the open source world - MaiaCMS.

• is designed to make web publishing managed entirely by non-technical staff;
• allows for page creation and editing within a “look-and-feel” setting that is identical to the live product;
• is intended to augment the content management options available by being feature rich, while easy-to-use;and quick to deploy; and
• is free software — waiting for a community to support and enhance it! (a caveat - we release this software rough and ready for volunteers and community members to provide:
  • documentation (esp. on how to install!) 
  • new modules
  • style sheets

MaiaCMS includes modules for

• announcements
• change password
• form administration
• front page management
• job opening page management
• mass mailer generation (e-mail)
• promotion management
• remote patron authentication
• scheduled task management
• site contacts
• site logs
• site management

Awesome & congrats to Howard County!!! Read more about it in their announcement post.

I haven’t gotten a copy of this report yet, so I can’t tell you (first hand) what’s covered, but I didn’t want you to miss out. So, if you get a chance, stop by your library and check out a copy of the newest Library Technology Report by Marshall Breeding (that’s what I’ll be doing).

In this issue, Breeding details the differences between using an open source approach to that of using conventional proprietary software for automated operations.

“In the past, our options were differentiated on the basis of features, functionality, price, and performance of the software and the perceived ability for a given company to develop its products into the future and provide adequate support. Do these factors differ with open source ILS products?”

Breeding’s report can help answer that question as well as defines open source and provides an overview of the various open source options currently available to libraries, including Koha and Evergreen.

Keep an eye out for more info from me after I get a chance to read this guide.

The results of a survey from last year have been published online.

This survey was conducted from October 30, 2007 to January 3, 2008. It was answered by libraries using the open source ILSs Koha (n=113) and Evergreen (n=119), and proprietary ILSs (n=129). The current version of Koha was 2.2.9 and Evergreen was 1.2.

There are a lot of results to read through, I have only skimmed it so far, but I wanted to share it with you all so that you too could read it.

This from the Koha mailing list:

Hi folks,

I’m happy to announce that a packaged release of Koha 3.00.00 is now available. You can download from the usual location:

http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00.tar.gz
http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00.tar.gz.sig

Release notes and more information can be found on the official Koha site.

Technorati Tags: koha, ils, libraries, open source

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!!

This from LibLime:

Anaheim, CA–July 1, 2008–LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries and the eXtensible Catalog (XC) project– an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded project currently underway at the University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries– have announced a new partnership agreement to ensure future compatibility between the XC project and Koha, the first open-source integrated library system.

The XC/LibLime partnership will ensure that the open-source software being developed as part of the XC project and the Koha open-source integrated library system will be fully compatible with each other, enabling current and future users of Koha to take advantage of the added capabilities for managing and distributing metadata that XC will offer. These benefits include facilitating the ability to combine legacy metadata with emerging schemas, and delivering library content to web content management and learning management systems.

Keep the open source library partnerships coming!!

Technorati Tags: liblime, koha, extensible catalog

I love listening to Marshall Breeding present - it always makes me feel better to know that someone can talk faster than me Marshall started his talk by showing us the lib-web-cats advanced search which allows you to search for libraries running specific systems. He did remind us to keep in mind that the systems shown are the ones that have made a commitment to a system (may not be live yet).

Broad Trends

Open source is highly used in the general IT arena with examples like Linux and Apache. If you believe the blogosphere, open source is going up up up - but it’s not necessarily true - Microsoft is also gaining a footing - showing that they are all good options. You need to make your decisions with all the facts in hand.

Open Source

Did you know that your general library infrastructure is open source? z39.50 is open source! And Index Data has been making tools based on this protocol for a long time (the Yaz toolkit is the main z39.50 tool being used).

Other open source options:

• Federated search - LibraryFind and Masterkey
• OCLC offers some stuff - typically older stuff that they want other people to take care of now
• Digital repositories - Fedora, DSpace, and Keystone

Next Marshall listed some open source discovery products - AKA - next gen catalogs:

• Vufind - based on Apache Solr search toolkit — toolkits make it accessible for relatively small development shops to create this stuff
• Extensible catalog - University of Rochester and the Melon Foundation
• fac-back-opac
• Scriblio - based on WordPress

Open Source in the ILS Arena - Products and Trends

It used to be bold and risky to move to an open source ILS. This move however led to a bunch of projects that are now products. That said, Marshall wants to make sure that people have the best information available to them when they make these decisions - he’s not an open source evangelist he’s a technology evangelist.

3 of the 4 open source ILS that were around in 2002 are now defunct so when Marshall wrote that the open source ILS it was still a distant future - it was true.

… then the world changed.

In March 2007 the world had changed, but open source is a minority player. In March 2008 open source is a real option out there, but you need to use the same criteria you use when choosing a closed source system.

Now, April 2008 the open source ILS has launched into the mainstream - there is a lot of room for optimism and there is going to more and more of this over time.

The ILS market is an industry in turmoil with mergers and acquisitions left and right causing disruptions and business decisions to narrow options. This has fueled the open source movement by providing libraries with additional options.

Open Source v. Traditional Licensing

So what side is Marshal on? He says both sides! He wouldn’t want to see a world where one or the other is the only option and thinks they complement the each other. Each library has it’s own personality and can use that in choosing their systems.

Recommendations for making a choice:

• avoid philosophical preference - make choices as business decisions instead
• which best supports the missions of libraries
• which approach helps libraries become better libraries?

Specifics

Koha

• first open source ILS
• Koha + Index Data Zebra = Koha Zoom
• 300+ libraries
• while there are a lot of small libraries - there are also some biggies signing up now
• the system has grown up to a level where it can handle these big libraries
• has the interface we want - facets, clean, book jackets

Evergreen

• developed by the GA public library system
• small dev team
• June 2004 - dev begins
• September 2005 live production
• streamlined environment - single shared implementation, all libraries, follow the same policies,
• one library card
• by far the most people using it are the GA PINES consortia
• it’s a big difference between supporting 250+ small libraries and supporting a big library system (so it will make a difference when the Atlanta area switched)
• has interface we want - facets, clean, book jackets

OPALS

• going gangbusters in the public school system
• created by Media Flex
• south central org of (school) libraries

NextGenLib

• ILS designed for the developing world
• originally traditionally licensed, introduced in 2003
• transition to open source in January 2008
• 122 installations (India, Syria, Sudan, Cambodia)

Learning Access ILS

• turnkey open source ILS
• designed for under-served rural public and tribal libraries
• defunct?? - has been trying to get in touch with these people - but can’t (email bounces)

There is also lot of commercial involvement these days:

• Index Data (founded 1994)
• LibLime (founded 2005)
  • small but growing
  • total of 20 FTP - hiring industry veterans exiting from traditional ILS companies
• Equinox (founded 2007)
  • contracts to GA PINES library system
• Care Affiliates (founded 2007)
  • recently formed founded by Carl Grant
• Media Flex (longstanding company)
• Duke is working on a proposal to create an open source ILS
• …there are others afoot

Issues

Explosive interest in open source is being driven by the disillusionment with current vendors. Given this, Marshall makes the point that the open source ILS would be where it is if it wasn’t for what was happening on the other end of things. Open source allows for more flexible systems and lower costs (however, Marshall still feels that total cost of ownership is the same between the two over the long haul). With open source libraries are less vulnerable to the mergers and acquisitions that are happening in the proprietary world.

Cost Issues

• cost shifted - no license fee
• hardware
• vendor support
• hosting
• conversion
• local technical support
• development costs
• open source vendors should come up with a total cost of ownership report to show us that open source is really cheaper

Open source risk factors

Marshall still thinks that open source is a risky alternative because of a dependency on community organizations and commercial companies to provide development and support services. I’d argue that this is a reason that open source is less risky - with a community of developers and support services you’re more likely to find someone to help you out if your vendor goes under. That said, Marshall admits that the other side is risky too!

All that said the interest in open source (and the market share) is relatively low.

Conclusions

What he’s looking for is a new system (aren’t we all) - built for how libraries are today. This is not an open source system that does what our systems already do today. In short, we have a long way to go on both fronts - both open and closed source.

Technorati Tags: cil2008, cil08, open source

This video has been around the web for a while - but I haven’t posted it here yet. If you haven’t seen the Open Source ILS song, you need to!

Back in March I wrote about the Next Generation Academic Library System Symposium at VALE:

• From Open Stacks to Open Source
• Evergreen Open Source Library System
• Koha Open Source Library System
• Q&A
• WALDO & the Koha Open Source ILS
• PINES & the Evergreen Open Source ILS

Now the videos are available online:

• Introduction - Taras Pavlovsky, David Pinto. Open Source Overview - Joe Lucia, Villanova University. Evergreen Open Source Library System - Bob Molyneux, Equinox. (Windows media video file)
• Koha Open Source Library System - Joshua Ferraro, LibLime. Panel Discussion: Lucia, Molyneux & Ferraro. (Windows media video file)
• Elizabeth McKinney de Garcia, Georgia PINES. (Windows media video file)
• Evergreen Acquisitions - Dan Scott, Laurentian University. Q & A - Lucia, Molyneux, Ferraro, Stromquist, McKinney de Garcia, & Scott. (Windows media video file)
• VALE OLS Study Group – Report on Evergreen Test Installation - Edward Corrado. Next Steps for VALE - Taras Pavlovsky, The College of New Jersey & Richard Sweeney, NJIT, Co-Chairs VALE OLS Taskforce (Windows media video file)

You can find Powerpoint files and podcasts at the VALE page.

Technorati Tags: open source, libraries, valenj

By the time the day ended at the VALE Symposium, I had very little battery power left. For that reason I did not get sufficient notes on the last presentation of the day. Dan Scott talked about Acquisitions for Evergreen and summarized his talk here.

Evergreen acquisitions has made significant progress since December 2007, and at this pace we expect a complete set of basic functionality to be in place by the end of April. By “basic functionality” I mean that the manual acquisitions mode should be supported with a minimalist user interface. MARC order record batch loading, EDI send/receive support, and a more polished user interface will take some more time - probably September-ish 2008. You can see the in-development, regularly updated bare-bones interface at http://acq.open-ils.org/oils/acq/base/index.

Technorati Tags: evergreen, georgia pines, valenj, open source