[Web4lib] RE: Open source support models

[Ross Singer]

If you're dealing with wicker baskets and paper, you might be happy
with something like OpenBiblio (http://obiblio.sourceforge.net/).
It's simple and pretty crude, really, but, I mean, hey... right now
you've got wicker baskets and paper.

But it's incredibly simple to install and get running.

And that sounds pretty much right on the mark, given the circumstances.

-Ross.

On 7/14/08, Caitlin Nelson <cnelson at hawaii.edu> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
>  Sorry if my emails seem naive or unstructured - I never meant to make a
>  point-by-point argument or say anything stunningly original, I was just
>  voicing a thought on a recent experience...  If you're still interested here
>  are some more thoughts:
>
>  Thomas Dowling wrote:
>  > I don't understand: are you saying there are commercial alternatives
>  > where the cost of software plus the cost of support is affordable in
>  > your situation, but free software plus Liblime support is not affordable?
>
>  Just to clarify: no, I wasn't saying that - I was just complaining :)  Of
>  course everything costs money (or time, or both) in the end.  It might make
>  a difference, though, if you have IT staff who are more familiar with one or
>  the other - our in-house IT staff does not support Linux at all.
>
>  Marcie Pierson wrote:
>  >Perhaps what she is saying is that, larger systems often have a person or
>  entire staff
>  >dedicated to IT/ILS, whether they use open source or not. Small systems
>  usually have to
>  >have one person become the IT/ILS guru on their own, and while open source
>  may have
>  >online groups that are happy to assist with troubleshooting and such, that
>  library person still
>  >has to do a lot of self-training. Regardless of cost/no cost, on top of
>  normal library duties, a
>  >staff member working in a small library has to also become an expert in
>  some piece(s) of
>  >software without the benefit of support from another department (or
>  person).
>
>  This is more along the lines of what I was intending to say, thanks Marcie!
>
>
>  Essentially here's the situation: our current "ILS" is a couple of wicker
>  baskets, some quarter-sheets of paper (check-out slips), and an aging Excel
>  list of inventory.  Our annual budgets is around $3500 (in a good year).
>  ANY system plus support is going to cost us money - probably more than we
>  can afford.  We have no IT person for the library, though we do have someone
>  for the entire school; I am the only librarian.  What I was hoping was that
>  an Open Source ILS would work for us, given that there was a chance I could
>  install it and get it running myself for free (in terms of just money).
>
>  What I ended up figuring out was that the time investment and learning curve
>  for installation and setup are huge obstacles to achieving this goal.  Like
>  I said in my previous post: I'm decent enough with computers and I like
>  learning how to do new kinds of work.  But I was not familiar enough with
>  command-line work, Linux environment, PERL, etc to be able to troubleshoot
>  or do anything that wasn't already written in the installation guide.  I
>  also got fed up with installation guides and error messages that said
>  something like "Have your systems administrator check this" - I AM the
>  systems administrator in this case!
>
>  On the plus side, the VMWare images were incredibly helpful (thanks Dan)
>  both for Koha and Evergreen, and a great starting place for us.  It takes
>  off the burden of having to do a complete install from scratch and I can
>  jump straight in to working with the actual ILS.  And, having gone through
>  the work of installing from scratch, I am now a more capable administrator
>  (becoming more so by the hour, I hope).
>
>  I thought I and my library would be a perfect combination for using an Open
>  Source ILS, but in the end I was surprised at how unaccessible it turned out
>  to be.  Maybe it was only a surprise to me (I should have read this list
>  more carefully)!  But it did leave me thinking about who exactly is supposed
>  to be able to use this kind of software.  Some final thoughts for you all:
>
>  - Who is the market for Open Source ILSs like Koha or Evergreen?
>  - If there is no clear benefit in terms of money (since instead you end up
>  paying for support anyway, or losing that money in terms of time) what is
>  the advantage of choosing Open Source over commercial software?
>  - What solution is there for small libraries who cannot afford support for
>  either Open Source or commerial systems?
>  - It seems like there is a fairly steep tech gap between moving from a
>  double-click installation process on Windows to the installation process for
>  something like Koha on Linux - is there a way to overcome this or is it
>  something people will just have to "deal with"?
>
>  Thanks,
>
>
>  Caitlin Nelson
>  Interim Librarian
>  TransPacific Hawaii College
>  Honolulu, HI
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