open source and librarianship

[Eric Lease Morgan]

I have just finished reading Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral And The
Bazaar (O'Reilly, 1999), and I believe the principles of the open source
movement are similar to the principles of librarianship. What do you think?

In the NCSU Libraries we are seriously considering sharing the source
code to MyLibary at NCState under the GPL. Hopefully we will improve upon
MyLibrary by using the open source development model. Consequently, I
needed to know more about open source, and I read Open Source
Development With CVS by Karl Fogel (Coriolis Group 1999) and Raymond,
above. Both texts were an easy, informative read.

There were a number of things described in both texts that reminded me
of librarianship. First and foremost with the idea of sharing
information. Both camps put a premium on open access. Both camps are
gift cultures and gain reputation by the amount of "stuff" they give
away. What people do with the information, whether it be source code or
journal articles, is up to them. Both camps hope the shared information
will be used to improve our place in the world. Just as Jefferson's
informed public is a necessity for democracy, open source software is
necessary for the improvement of computer applications.

Second, human interactions are a necessary part of the mixture in both
librarianship and open source development. Open source development
requires people skills by source code maintainers. It requires an
understanding of the problem the computer application is trying to
solve, and the maintainer must assimilate patches with the application.
Similarly, librarians understand that information seeking behavior is a
human process. While databases and many "digital libraries" house
information, these collections are really "data stores" and are only
manifested as information after the assignment of value are given to the
data and inter-relations between datum are created.

Third, it has been stated that open source development will remove the
necessity for programers. Yet Raymond posits that no such thing will
happen. If anything, there will an increased need for programmers.
Similarly, many librarians feared the advent of the Web because they
believed their jobs would be in jeopardy. Ironically, librarianship is
flowering under new rubrics such as information architects and knowledge managers.

It has also been brought to my attention by Kevin Clarke that both
institutions use peer-review:

  Your cultural take (gift culture) on "open source"
  is interesting.  I've been mostly thinking in
  material terms but you are right, I think, in your
  assesment.  One thing you didn't mention is that,
  like acadmic librarians, open source folks
  participate in a peer-review type process.

All of this is happening because of an information economy. It sure is
an exciting time to be a librarian, especially a librarian who can build
relational databases and program on a Unix computer.

(Thank you to Art Rhyno who encouraged me to post this message here.)

--
Eric Lease Morgan
Digital Library Initiatives Department, NCSU Libraries
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/