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

A good plan.

[Oculus Habent]

Hmm...

This could do well in association with a local User Group of some sort, methinks.

Getting a bunch of people together to organize the CD labeling, DVD-cases instead of jewel cases, etc could help spread the cost and work around, as well as creating a perfect "next step" for the people checking out the software - a user group basically waiting for them.

I especially like the quote: Forcing anyone to do something they don't want to do just breeds resentment.

BYOCD

[dolo666]

I suggest to Mr. Kerr, that he consider BYOCD (bring your own CD). Users could burn their own cdroms from a plethora of projects that meet a particular library criteria, for quality and safety.

It might be smart for libraries to offer two methods for achieving this:

1) Library burns cds on demand for a small fee.
2) Users burn cds themselves.

Having actual cdroms on a shelf for people to "check out", as it were, is likely a bad idea for a number of reasons. The large volume of cds occupying shelves would be a copy of the old library system, so it would likely be their default method, but it's incorrect, imho; it's a waste of space; it goes against the mighty electronic way. Burning on demand is the way to go because the open source community could ensure that the most recent versions of software are available, and that fresh new content would flow into libraries everywhere, rather than fill up shelves until the place has no more room.

Stop gaps could be issued at the base system, to prevent abuse, and this would be much easier if the product was electronic.

Re:BYOCD

[ron_ivi]

I'd like to see burn-on-demand CDs for free books, and sheet music such as those from Project Gutenberg as well.

This could be a great distribution channel for indie bands distributing legal free music as well.

Re:BYOCD

[Osty]

Sure, there are warning posters above them telling people not to violate copyright; if this suffices for printed books and magazines, then why not for CD and DVD materials as well?

You can't really be that dense, can you? To photocopy a book, at an average of 250 pages by $0.10 per page and 5 seconds to copy a page, you're looking at $25 and 20 minutes. You could go out and buy your own copy of most books for that price, and even if you choose to still copy the book you'll have a loose pile of paper with a good possibility of some unreadable portions due to the copier, not a bound and printed copy of the book.

Contrast that with copying a CD (or DVD, once DVD writers become more common-place), where the cost of entry is less than $1 for a CD-R, copying takes less than 10 minutes, and you end up with a perfect copy of the CD when you're done (minus any liner notes or artwork, but the content is exactly the same and in the same format). A warning poster is good enough for books, because there's too much effort and cost to copy them for the gain. That's not the case for music or movies.

And finally, it makes sense for you to photocopy a page or three of an encyclopedia or other reference material. That's fair use, and you can freely do it. You could do the same with music as well, but I don't really see the same utility in grabbing 10 seconds of a song. I'm sure somebody out there has a need for that (music majors, perhaps?), but it's by far not the majority of people who copy music.

Re:BYOCD

[eaolson]

You can't really be that dense, can you? To photocopy a book, at an average of 250 pages by $0.10 per page and 5 seconds to copy a page, you're looking at $25 and 20 minutes. You could go out and buy your own copy of most books for that price, and even if you choose to still copy the book you'll have a loose pile of paper with a good possibility of some unreadable portions due to the copier, not a bound and printed copy of the book.

You're assuming that the book is available somewhere for a reasonable price. Sure, no one is going to copy a paperback of the latest Danielle Steele novel, but I've copied several scientific texts that were hard to get or out-of-print. It's basically how I got through graduate thermodynamics. For one old, fairly obscure book that my graduate advisor needed, he asked me to check it out of the library for him, "lose" it, and pay the fine so we could have a copy for the lab. This went against my sense of fair play, so I popped down to Kinko's, dupped it, bound it, and now everyone wins.

The problem with the whole digital revolution is that it allows us to do things on a scale simply never possible before. Sure, it was technically illegal to dub tapes and give them to your friends, or to photocopy a recipe and send it to your mother, but it would never be worth prosecuting simply because of the difficulty in finding people, and the cost of prosecution for such a small return.

Linux on Demand Kiosk w/ CD burner

[ptelligence]

A project for your local Linux group: Take an old machine with a burner and donate a Linux kiosk to the library. Install enough hard drive space to hold ISOs of recent versions of the most popular distros. Make an intuitive menu for selecting a distribution to burn and then just have the user insert CDs after that. The library could sell blank CDs or users could bring their own..

How do you keep it fresh?

[elbowdonkey]

I'd predict that even if all the hurdles of convincing a library to maintain an OSS CD library were jumped, the library itself would suffer the same fate as technical books at most local libraries.

The technical books themselves take so long to procure because of the multiple(albiet not vast) layers of red tape that by the time they end up on the shelves, they're flirting with being out of date (just as new tech books flirt with being out of date before even hitting the store shelves).

I can't think of any open source project that isn't regularly patched, and because of this constant progression, I can't see a CD library being up to date, ever. It would require an individual or group of individuals who would simply cost too much to justify having them in the first place to maintain it.

Good luck

[SuperBanana]

A project for your local Linux group: Take an old machine with a burner and donate a Linux kiosk to the library.

I tried to get one system into our local town library. The director of the library flatly refused to even consider the proposal to have a linux workstation in the library.

Essentially, even if volunteer-maintained and/or no maintenance required(think Knoppix), she said that they were Windows, and Windows only, and that was because that's what the Minuteman Network supports(the Minuteman Network is a nice little corporation that's making money off the local town libraries.)

Despite being exceptionally polite, she wouldn't even examine the proposal, and complained about issues I had addressed already- in the proposal, if she had bothered to read it.