Librarians Stake Their Future on OSS

Systems Librarian writes "Linux.com is running a story entitled 'Librarians stake their future on open source'. It details a group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service that have developed an open source, enterprise-class library management system that may revolutionize the way large-scale libraries are run. The system is Evergreen. The element of this project that has the participants especially excited is the speed. Previously, if users wanted changes to their systems, they'd be put into an 'enhancement queue'. Now, some features are implemented overnight. From the article: 'In fact, the catalog has many features and innovations that are lacking in non-free systems. It does on-the-fly spellcheck and gives search suggestions and adds additional content, such as book covers, reviews, and excerpts. The Shelf Browser shows items ordered along a virtual shelf built out of the holdings of the entire system. Patrons can create bookbags, which are lists that contain a selected collection of annotated titles. Bookbags can be kept private or shared as a regular Web page or as Atom or RSS feeds.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Comments

Those Librarians must be gifted!

[bogaboga]

It details a group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service that have developed an open source, enterprise-class library management system that may revolutionize the way large-scale libraries are run.

The system appears to be pretty complex from the description above. If indeed, it's the group of librarians that developed it, they must be very very gifted. I am trying to see how any of the librarians at my former university would develop a system even half as complex. They did not seem to be all that IT savvy! And by the way, mine was a "prestigious" university in the USA.

But I guess the definition of "enterprise-class" is in itself, subjective.

Re:Those Librarians must be gifted!

[good soldier svejk]

This librarian can program, although it was never a passion. Her father, OTOH is the famous engineer/programmer and infamous manager Tom West. She is also a free speech activist who devised a Patriot Act FBI visit alert system for libraries.

Re:Those Librarians must be gifted!

[kfg]

My library was well stocked with those (they had K&R as well. Thank God for timeless classics). Then one day Knuth suddenly appeared on the shelves.

When I inquired who the new computer savvy guy was they wondered how I could tell, but yes, there was a new guy and yes, he seemed to know something about these computer thingies so they were having him spiff up the section a bit.

So far he seems to be doing a fine job of not only cleaning out the dross but buying exactly the right titles to replace them. I wonder if he reads Slashdot.

KFG

Good

[delirium of disorder]

It always annoyed me when public money was spent on proprietary software, especially when there already are free solutions that are more secure and full featured. For some reason my local library uses Internet explorer and not Firefox on their computers designated for web access only. It's almost enough for me to try to get elected to the library district.

Nice!

[tehSpork]

I'm a college student and have been working part-time at a local library for the past few years to pay the bills.

Our library consortium uses something called Polaris, by Gaylord Information Systems. It's among the worst pieces of software I have ever had the opportunity to use, and it is completely proprietary and Windows based. It's a pain in the ass to get anything done, and is missing several key features (such as customizable reports) that would make our lives much easier. Coming from a company called "Gaylord" what can we expect, eh?

Hopefully Evergreen gains enough steam to get our consortium to at least consider it, however considering that most of the IT people employed by the consortium can't even figure out how to manage Windows servers it's likely they'll opt for something easer for them to administrate. :(

Any smaller scale solutions out there?

[collinong]

for quite some time, i've been looking for a open source or cheap low-end library management system for my church's small library. something that would let people create an account, log in and then check out books themselves. (there's no librarian sitting there) Then, send them email reminders when a book is due. Other cool things would be: browse the collection on the library computer or online; if a book is checked out, you can send a message to whoever has it; reserve books online; book data input from Amazon or other sources. The dream solution would be if people could enter their own book/video/etc. collections that they are willing to share and those become extensions of the library. If you want an item from a private collection, email them and see if they can loan it to you (with checkout and reminders registered in the library computer, of course). The systems for "real" libraries like Koha and evergreen are overkill for something like this. Anybody know of anything close to this or at least could provide the first level of functionality (without the cool features)?

Re:it's data entry and physical work, not software

[dangitman]

This process took MONTHS and the work of several librarians and the expensive data-entry company.

This seems irrelevant, as most libraries already use computerized systems. So, we're not talking about conversion from a card catalog. The data would already be in a database, and that could be converted pretty easily. It's a much simpler process to change software than to move from card to computers.

Upgrading from other systems?

[edmicman]

Wow, just skimmed that site and played with the demo a bit and it looks pretty awesome. I used to do some tech work for a local library, and they used a management system from Follett, and had a massive upgrade from an older version to a newer version while I was there. Does Evergreen offer any sort of importing or upgrading from other management systems? This sound like it would be very beneficial to public libraries, especially if the regional co-ops/consortiums adopted it. But unless they can easily import their existing catalogs into the OSS software, they're probably not going to want to re-add and redo their existing setups altogether.

Re:Upgrading from other systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't judge a book (Evergreen) solely by its cover (the public-interface parts of their software). Fully-functional library systems are unbelieveably complex, far more so than just about anyone outside the industry would believe. It's way more than just keeping track of books. Evergreen is still not on par with most top-tier commercial library systems; it still has several significant (and complex) modules to tackle that run the back room at the library. Mundane stuff, but critical nonetheless. I think they're really doing a good job, but it still has a ways to go. FWIW, many commercial systems run on Linux, too, and many libraries are migrating from proprietary O/S's to Linux.

Re:it's data entry and physical work, not software

[hearingaid]

The data would already be in a database, and that could be converted pretty easily.

Most of it shouldn't even need to be converted. It should be in MARC Bibliographic format, which is generally fairly easy to transfer between databases.

Where you get into the proprietary stuff is in the location databases: the databases which say that, say, Nicomachean Ethics is available in the Jefferson or Adams Building General or Area Studies Reading Rooms.p>But really, let's be realistic. The major OPAC package is Voyager, which runs on top of Oracle, so runs on anything that runs Oracle. Libraries that don't have Voyager are pretty much all just wishing they could afford it (and the Oracle licenses).