A picture is worth a thousand words.
There are moments in time, when you know things have changed, not just a little, but a lot. Sometimes, they’re political (in my memory, things like JFK’s election and assassination, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King’s assassinations), sometimes global (landing on the moon or September 11th), sometimes personal (you and your spouse have a child), and sometimes they’re professional. I’ve just returned home with this feeling about the profession fresh in my mind now that ALA is over and now that I’ve had a moment to reflect on what I saw, heard and participated in with regard to the library automation landscape. There is a shift underway in library automation. It is major and I won’t be surprised if it becomes seismic in the end. Let me explain why I think that is the case.
When we were planning for this conference, we had a feeling this would be one where people would want to know about open source software and solutions. We felt we had an opportunity to provide information — a lot of information, and people would seek it out and readily absorb it and make decisions using it. Based on that feeling, we had planned a number of seminars in our booth and our colleagues at LibLime did the same. These seminars were focused on providing, via library professionals and colleagues, descriptions of what could be done with open source software, the possibilities, probabilities and processes. We launched the seminars not knowing for sure if we were taking the pulse right, but definitely thinking we were. We walked into the conference wondering if we would be talking to a few people or, would it be standing room only? It did not take long for us to get the answer. After the first one, we knew we were going to be dealing with a lot of standing room only sessions. It didn’t matter if the session was on integrated library systems, OPAC replacements or repositories, people seized the opportunities provided to hear, to learn and to discuss with colleagues, what was happening. (See the pictures below). They were standing in the aisles, in any open spot, leaning in, listening intently, watching closely and nodding approvingly. They liked what they were seeing, liked what they were hearing, wanting to be part of something that they too could feel growing, embracing them and providing answers to a set of problems that had been dumped on them without their consent, by those whose needs concerns are expressed solely through spreadsheets. The customers of those firms were saying “Enough, it’s time to look at the options.” And open source is one of those options, one where the freedom, the control, the focus on service rather than dollars and the better return on investment for the librarian, rather than the vendor is presenting an overwhelming set of reasons to consider new options. The number of people leaving business cards requesting follow-up is very impressive.
A friend and colleague, who I deeply respect, said to me: “The story of this conference, with regard to automation, would be to have a picture of the open source vendor booth(s) at last ALA and then to compare it to the picture of the same thing at this ALA.” Well, fortunately, I have a few of those pictures and I enclose them below. What is the saying? “A picture is worth a thousand words??” Well, in that light, I’ll leave it to these pictures to finish the majority of this post…
This was the open source booth at the last show, six months ago. Three vendors sharing a 10×20 booth:
This is from ALA, Mid-Winter 2008, just completed, six months later. Note the people standing in the aisles to hear about Open Source Software and Solutions.
Compare our presence below (this is from setup, before the doors opened for people to surge in) to that in the photo from Mid-Winter (two pictures above). Two 20×20 booths and we could have used more…
