[WEB4LIB] Re: will OSS impact library automation?

[Marshall Breeding]

Also think of the issue from a broad historical perspective.  Starting 
in the 1970's and on through the 90's there were a large number of 
libraries involved in the development of library automation systems.  
Not exactly under the open source model we think of today, but 
these were largely collegial and cooperative efforts.  That codebase 
has migrated from the ownership of libraries to vendors or has been 
simply abandoned.  

I think that it is fair to say that libraries have generally found the 
process of developing and supporting large-scale automation 
systems to be too burdensome for ongoing sustainability.  Many of 
the libraries that had created their own full-featured, large-scale 
automation systems have abandonded them for vendor-supplied 
systems. Some of the ones that come to mind include Library of 
Congress, Northwestern University, Penn State, Jefferson County 
(CO), and Duke.  The current trend is from locally-developed 
systems to vendor supplied systems, not the other way around.

What is different about the current open source movement that will 
enable the successful development and support of library 
automation systems from the earlier efforts that weren't 
sustainable?

To use Eric Raymond's terms, is the ILS too much a cathederal to 
be build in a bazaar?

thanks for your thoughts...

-marshall

> On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 11:41:08AM -0800, Cindy Murdock wrote:
> > 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?
> 
> This is the beauty of having the source code.  Maybe you don't 
> want to do any programming yourself, but if you have the source
> code you can take all the money you saved from not getting jacked by
> III and hire some consultants to provide support/fix problems. Even if
> you have expensive consultants you would probably still save money and
> you wouldn't be locked into ``our product doesn't do that''.
> 
> I would love to help create free software for libraries, but I
> don't know much about what libraries need.  What do they need?
> 
> The programming itself doesn't seem (to me) to be the real problem. 
> Its the mindset that ``There must be some software we can purchase
> that does this...'' , which unfortuately translates to ``How can I pay
> the most outrageous fee for some software that sucks''.
> 
> > Just some thoughts...
> 
> Good thoughts.
> 
> > Cindy
> > 
> > Cindy Murdock
> > Network Administrator
> > Meadville Public Library
> > www.meadvillelibrary.org
> 
> -Mark



-marshall