[WEB4LIB] will OSS impact library automation?

[Charles P. Hobbs]

Eric Hellman wrote:

> I was browsing though the program for the "e-libraries" conference in
> May (NYC), and I saw this statement in the abstract of a talk by
> Marshall Breeding, "Library Technology Officer" at Vanderbilt:
>
>        " The Open Source movement has stirred a lot of discussion, but
> it will not make a huge impact in
>           library automation"
>
> I suppose one terribly unfair translation of this is "Although most
> libraries will run web servers on Apache, listservs on something else
> free, databses on MySQL and much of the the code will be written in
> Perl, library administrators should continue to focus their attention
> and money on getting proprietary systems to do what they want them
> to."
>
> Obviously, he doesn't mean to say "Perl will not have a huge impact
> in library automation" but rather something like "Don't expect to see
> gnuOPAC anytime soon".
>

There's a good thread on open-source library automation systems at
Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/08/22/2040245.shtml

It's certainly *possible* to make such a system, although definitely non-trivial.

Setting up a support infrastructure might be an issue, especially with a product
intended for various non-(computer)-technical end-users.


>

--
Charles P. Hobbs
King Drew Health Science Library
http://www.cdrewu.edu/kdhsl