Slashdot Mirror

In larger libraries, there's often someone with the title of 'systems librarian. It might be the person who just configures the software packages that the library uses, but it's often someone with a bit of IT skills.

It might be an IT person who slowly picks up the librarian issues (and some will go and get a library degree if at an academic library), or it's a library person with a bit of IT skills.

If you're one of these people, and aren't already on the code4lib mailing list, I highly recommend it. (although be warned, occassionally threads get out of control).

You can also check the code4lib jobs board for what sort of skills libraries are looking for.

In larger libraries, there's often someone with the title of 'systems librarian. It might be the person who just configures the software packages that the library uses, but it's often someone with a bit of IT skills.

It might be an IT person who slowly picks up the librarian issues (and some will go and get a library degree if at an academic library), or it's a library person with a bit of IT skills.

If you're one of these people, and aren't already on the code4lib mailing list, I highly recommend it. (although be warned, occassionally threads get out of control).

You can also check the code4lib jobs board for what sort of skills libraries are looking for.

Most of us haven't been in a school library in years, unless we have kids who are of that age.

There are a *lot* of librarian mailing lists out there ... if you want the geek perspective, try code4lib. They won't suggest that you try to hack together your own loan system using smartphones & barcode readers. (they'll instead tell you about the one they made that you can have a copy of)

Most of the innovation in library spaces is happening in public & college libraries these days, adding makerspaces or going high-tech ... but that's not applicable to an elementary school. I wouldn't even suggest it for a high school (where you'd have seperate computer labs, shop classes, home ec., etc.)

I wouldn't even bother with educating them on the benefits of real, deep research vs. satisficing with the top hit from Google ... leave that for middle or high school. In elementary school, just focus on making reading accessible and fun.

The only thing that you I think is wrong with school libraries is that they're closed in summer, so the books are sitting going to waste. I'd love to see there be better coordination between our local school & library systems, but our current library system is so disfunctional that I don't see that changing without them getting rid of the director who thought it was a good idea to fire all of the branch managers.

Get involved with code4lib http://code4lib.org/about and ask on their mailing list. I see tech solutions have already been suggested, Koha, Evergreen - also look at Blacklight http://projectblacklight.org/, but the knowledge in the code4lib group will be invaluable.

Don't ask generic nerds -- ask library nerds : code4lib . They have a pretty active mailing list.

Also, there's oss4lib which is specifically for open source software, but I haven't seen much activity on their list in a while, and I think most of us are on both lists. (there's also a few cataloging specific lists, but they get to be all library-sciencey, with discussions of RDA and FRBR and cataloging aggregates).

I'm surprised that there were quite a few programs not mentions on the DMS wikipedia page -- People might consider them to be more as repository software than DMS (or RMS), but some other ones to mention that would be useful to managing already existing documents:

• FedoraCommons
• DSpace

And if you're looking for librarians with an IT background, in the libraries they're called "Systems Librarians". You might also check out the oss4lib and code4lib communities.

>>you librarians

Thanks for the promotion. :)

>>the world needs more people doing the cataloging

I don't disagree. My point wasn't that non-experts shouldn't be enabled to do cataloguing, but that cataloguing is an art and that it takes practice to get good at it, whether you are a "trained" librarian or not.

Very few people get an MLIS to become "experts" - at cataloguing or anything else. (Most of my classmates in my cataloguing class hated doing the actual work of cataloguing, and I suspect it's always been that way.) Most get an MLIS because it's required to be considered for professional-level positions in libraries. That unfortunately makes it akin to a vocational degree, unless you strive to make it something more. The ALA has discussed standardizing MLIS curricula for ages, but that has yet to happen. Until the curriculum you get in an MLIS program is standardized, and those standards are adhered to for hiring and retention purposes (a la medical school followed by ongoing board certification), an MLIS will continue to be seen as a job ticket.

It's too bad that you took some outdated courses (they still exist, unfortunately, as anyone currently or just out of almost any MLIS program can tell you). But they definitely don't represent current thinking in information studies. All of the issues you bring up are being discussed in forward-thinking IS programs.

But I digress. My point is that cataloguing is complex - not because the AACR2 is full of arcane rules and strangely organized (although it is both), but because teasing out all the details can get very interesting. That's what makes cataloguing something more than "monotonous, tedious effort".

>>a folksonomy that could accommodate the hierarchy of each and every one of these ill conceived classifications

Why would you want to accomodate an "ill-conceived" classification's hierarchy into anything? The problem with LC classification is not that the hierarchy is bad -- it's extremely thorough and well thought out -- but that it's so rigid and hidebound. As Sandy Berman discovered, it cannot be changed from the bottom up, and once everything began to be standardized for the sake of sharing data, the idea of cataloguing "for the people" (and Sandy's job, unfortunately) went by the wayside. His subject headings have recently been revived on the Internet by some of the Code4Lib people. If I get your point, you are saying that his classification system, as well as LC's and anyone else's, could be included in an über-classification system that pointed to all related classes from central database. I wonder whether Open Library could be a rallying point for such an effort -- it would have to be fixed to be in line with FRBR first (separating works, expressions, and manifestations, for one thing), but that's an interesting idea.

Personally I think these debates about classification will fall by the wayside as systems like Google Books, and perhaps this new effort, really get going. As Google knows, nothing beats a full text search for locating all and every related piece of information. Classification will be for locating information (physically or digitally), perhaps for refining searches, and most certainly for the intellectual task of organizing information hierarchically. Full text search will be for finding (what you're looking for). In the real world, it's already that way to some extent, thanks to our Friends at Google, and that will intensify as Google Books heats up.

It's a lot more complex than just running rpm against a tarball. This application depends on Apache, PostgreSQL, a Jabber server, libmemcached, CVS versions of SpiderMonkey and the lib-dbi / lib-dbd packages, and a host of Perl modules. Georgia's installation runs on top of 25 servers. Getting a secure, stable system up and running was understandably the Evergreen team's first priority; making the source and as much documentation available as they already have was a courtesy that they didn't even have to extend. However, they've gone further than that: they have made a commitment to open source, and librarians-who-do-development / developers-for-libraries thank them for that!

The project is still in its infancy as far as growing outside of Georgia. That's why a few of us are starting by trying to build Open-ILS (aka Evergreen) on our own, following the existing installation instructions. We've already been able to tease out a few more details in the process of trying to create distribution-specific instructions... not that the developers are trying to keep installation hard, it's just that they've lived and breathed this for the last year and a half and so some details are second-nature to them.

I have been quite impressed with the Evergreen team's technical capabilities and commitment to open source. They have contributed patches to the upstream libdbi and libdbd packages as a matter of course, and they pull in a ton of Perl modules that are either not packaged in most distributions, or on which they have dependencies on newer versions than are available in current distros. The team is committed to a transparent open source model comparable to the Linux or PostgreSQL development models and have posted a first draft of that model for comment.

So, the first hurdle is to set up an Evergreen environment outside of Georgia. I've come very close with Ubuntu and Gentoo, but have one more hurdle to clear. All the way along, the developers have been extremely responsive to my questions.

Once we nail down the "gotchas", my personal goal is to create a VMWare image that can be easily redistributed for demonstration purposes. I agree that packaging is obviously going to be an important aspect of the project, but it naturally has to follow a well-documented manual install process.

Evergreen is going to spread outside of Georgia, and it's going to spread fast. The University of Windsor has already announced their intention to work with Evergreen to build an acquisitions system.