[WEB4LIB] Re: will OSS impact library automation?

[Eric Hellman]

At 11:39 AM -0800 3/22/01, Cindy Murdock wrote:
>  > 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".
>
>I think the reason we won't be seeing it anytime soon is due to the fact
>that most open source programs that crop up are created by those who need
>them, and have the knowledge in how to write them.  Once more and more
>librarians come out of grad programs with (dare I hope) programming skills,
>then we may very well see more.  I'd love to write a circ system myself, but
>I haven't a fraction of the knowledge necessary, nor the time to figure it
>out.  It would be a project bigger than one person could accomplish.  I
>think a great idea would be to write a grant to fund a group of open source
>programmers to write one, and then release the source and the software for
>anyone to use.  Here we got our Linux/OpenBSD consultant to write an online
>catalog for us (http://ccfls.org/catalog/search.html if you want to take a
>look) but it's independent of our circ system; in order to update its
>records I have to do so manually.

I'd say that the reason is more that an OPAC or a circ system is a 
boring tedious complex project, unappealing to code-poets. Not hard 
enough, too many t's to cross and i's to dot. And there's enough 
diversity and competition in proprietary OPAC's that there's no 
compelling need. Successful Open Source projects start small, new and 
simple, do one thing really well, and then get improved.


>Admittedly another problem would be tech support.  Yes, I resent that we
>have to lay out such large sums of cash to our catalog vendor for support,
>but what do you do in the case of major problems?  Until an open source
>catalog acquired a large user base where the users could support one
>another, what alternatives would you have?

can't support something that doesn't exist; it's a myth that you 
can't get support for Open Source- since you're not locked in to a 
vendor it costs less too.

Eric

Eric Hellman
Openly Informatics, Inc.
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