Open Source CD Lending For Public Libraries?

phatlipmojo writes "Bob Kerr has taken what might well be an important step in getting open source software to the masses: donating CDs to public libraries for lending. It's a simple idea, but fraught with complications; indeed, at first, he couldn't give the CDs away to the wary libraries. Mr. Kerr dealt with the complications admirably, and has had a great deal of success getting open source CDs into lending libraries around his home country, as Mr. Kerr's howto PDF and this NewsForge article detail. What kinds of suggestions would Slashdotters make in addition to Mr. Kerr's to help make open source software on public library shelves a widespread reality?"

Comments

No thanks.

[fuzzeli]

I'm the IT manager at a large public library, and I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot stack of catalog cards.

We have almost completely stopped circulating CD-ROMs of any sort because the patrons have an expectation that the library will help them make it work, and if you mix initially lousy or just plain old software ("this storybook requires you to install quicktime 2.1") with who-knows-what the patron's got at home, it spells customer service disaster. No matter what kind of a disclaimer you put on it, circulating this kind of stuff would incur far more ill will from clueless patrons than it would benefit any unlikely geek who knows what they're doing but doesn't have access to sufficient bandwidth.

However, I would happily offer burners for public use and make blank media (and our bandwidth) available. That way, they get to keep the disc. Or hand them out at intro to OSS classes. Or mirror some trees. But put them on the shelves? No way. On top of everything else, they'd be outdated before they even made it through cataloging.

Nice idea though.

Re:No thanks.

[fuzzeli]

IT gets involved when the circulation staff has a CD-ROM that the patron says is broken, and circ can't figure out what (nothing) is wrong with it, or irate patrons demand help and the call gets passed to us.

While sticking to one's guns is of course possible, it's not good customer service to offer a product with a disclaimer or to turn away a patron in need of assistance. Sure, its par for the course in the commercial world, but we prefer to uphold a higher standard of service.

And bestsellers aren't revised several times per week.

What would be a far, far cooler idea (although not as cheap) would be to develop a kiosk that maintained its own local copies of many high-profile projects and allowed users to select from a menu what they wanted to burn to a blank they supplied. On-demand content, they get to keep it, and the kiosk could keep itself updated. All of the benefit, but none of the risk, unless of course someone manages to burn a disk on a day when a bug was in the tree. If the content is freely reproducible, why should they have to bring it back, or even worse... incur FINES! then it would no longer be free (as in beer).