Once again, we at CARE Affiliates are joining with Index Data to offer a series of educational sessions in our booth at ALA. The Index Data/CARE booth will be #466 in the Anaheim Convention Center.

It is important to understand that these seminars are truly intended to be educational in nature, not product sales sessions.  They’re short, about 30-40 minutes and cover a variety of topics at various times.  They will include:

Sharing Stuff — How can we make a living if we give it all away? Mike Taylor, Software Guy, Index Data.   Saturday, June 28th at 11:30am and Sunday, June 29th at 10:30am

Building Solutions the Index Data way. Sebastian Hammer, President, Index Data.  Saturday, June 28th at 2:00pm and Monday, June 30th at 11:30am

“Blowing the doors off metasearch”; Opening up a world of resources to your users. This session will cover OpenTranslators, MasterKey and other technologies you can use.  Carl Grant, President, CARE Affiliates.  Saturday, June 28th at 4:00pm and Monday, June 30th at 9:30am.

Planning for a Repository. This session is designed to introduce concepts to be considered in planning for the implementation of a repository.   Carl Grant, President, CARE Affiliates.  Sunday, June 29th at 12:30pm and Monday, June 30th at 1:30pm

The Universal Search Solution: A Case Study in the Index Data Approach. Come learn how the next generation of metasearch is being built.  Sebastian Hammer, President, Index Data.  Sunday, June 29th at 2:30pm.

If you want to attend a session, please note that seating is limited (8-10 seats). Sending an RSVP to “info (at) care-affiliates.com” will help them ensure adequate seating is provided. We also advise you to stop by our I booth (#466) when you first get to the exhibit floor to see if any last minute changes have occurred in the schedule due to unforeseen circumstances.

We look forward to seeing you there.

I won’t claim there is anything new in this white-paper by Ingres, but if you’d like to hear what you’ve heard from the small open source vendors in the library market being said by a major corporation with thousands of customers, then you might find this paper provides some level of assurance. (It could also come in handy if you’re trying to convince a Board Member about open source and they give you a blank stare when you say “Index Data“, “Relais“, “CARE“, “LibLime“ or “Equinox“ but at least acknowledge they’ve heard of a company called “Ingres“. Many of the reasons Ingres cites as to why open source is a viable option for all size institutions (all the way up to enterprise level) bears striking similarity to what we’ve said in previous posts. It’s short, to the point and carries some authority. You might find it useful.

One thing you can count on in reading blogs is different perspective. So, today I read two interesting posts, both talking about open source. The first, a blog by Tom Chamberlain, discussed some reasons why open source continues to have a growing presence in the software market. I particularly found myself agreeing when Chamberlain stated:

“The Software Industry is polluted with examples of companies doing more work than they need to by spending money on building things that already exist.”

There are those of us in library automation that have been saying this for quite awhile. We’re too small an industry to have virtually every vendor reinventing what should be shared infrastructure. Again, Chamberlain says it well when he states:

“To give one example, its an enormous waste of money for Microsoft and Apple to both develop lower level functionality to interface with identical hardware. No one buys an OS based on how elegantly it communicates with its serial bus. If these companies agreed to share technology that was identical in both systems they could spend their money competing on the things that consumers actually care about.”

I guess this particularly hit home for me because I remember back to a couple of years ago, organizing a meeting of the other Presidents of the major ILS vendors (well, except one and you can probably guess who that was) at an ALA conference and making this same pitch to them. As I said to them at the time, “if we started with a clean sheet of paper, designing a new ILS system, none of us would come up with what we’re selling right now.” I also pointed out that to reinvent an ILS, from the ground up was a major expenditure that most firms couldn’t and wouldn’t want to bear. So, I made the pitch that we all join together and build that new system, with the core being shared code (either open source, or code controlled by a foundation of which you had to be a member or else you paid a fee to use it). I then made the pitch that each vendor could then focus on developing extensions and add-ons to that base set of shared infrastructure code. To the credit of all the attendees, everyone expressed interest and started listing out problems that would have to be solved for it to work. We all went our ways and then outside forces intervened and companies were sold/combined and some of the people that had sat around that table disappeared from the industry. It was a disappointment but I still believe in the core concept and that’s why I found Chamberlain’s post so interesting.

He goes on to say:

“there will always be parts of software that rely on closed source just as there is still proprietary technology in cars. But I think you’ll eventually see those closed source implementations resting on an Open Source Foundation and the consumer will be better off for it.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Which is why the next post I read by Peter McCracken of Serials Solutions also struck a chord with me. (In the interest of full disclosure, Serials Solutions is a partner of CARE Affiliates). First, let me state that I have great respect for Peter and what he has accomplished in this industry. It’s really very impressive. At the same time, I’m concerned when I read posts like this because it shows there is still much to be understood about open source and the movement behind it. Now, of course, you expect a provider of proprietary based products to strongly defend what they’re doing and to point out the problems of what they might see as an impending threat (after all, Microsoft spends fortunes doing this!). But if we’re assuming forthrightness in what is being said, it misses the following points:

1. Most open source vendors are not telling you that you should use open source because it is free. Of all the ones I deal and interact with, they go out of their way to avoid saying this. What they do say is that you will have:

a. A competitive environment in which to bid costs like software maintenance and development of new features. Therefore, you’ve obtained some protection from price hikes (how about that annual cost-of-living increase? Adds up, doesn’t it?) that seem unreasonable.

b. The ability to have a level of control both over your budget and direction that you don’t have with proprietary software. The library automation industry is itself, littered with systems that were bought and then phased out, often to the dismay of the libraries using them. This simply can’t happen with open source. So, no unexpected budget surprises. Furthermore if your vendor won’t put a feature in your software that you desperately need, or if they as this post claims can happen “sold you some vaporware” — then hire a programmer and get it put in. You can’t easily do that with proprietary software, but you certainly can with open source.

2. Quoting McCracken’s post again:

“One person representing a commercial service pointed out that they would often reply to Requests for Proposals that contained many absolute requirements and when they didn’t win the contract, they’d discover that some open source solution that didn’t meet many of the requirements had been selected. So folks are applying different selection criteria to systems based on their open source-ness. Both Marshall and the vendor said that was a problem.”

I’ll concede this is likely true, but I would submit that the reason this is happening is that the market still hasn’t really figured out how to ask the right questions in their analysis of open source software, in order to quantify/qualify these criteria. Too often that criteria probably resides in the “gut-feel” that this is new, exciting and they should be part of it. At worse it is a reaction to some of what has happened in the software market due to acquisitions and products, customers wanted and/or were using, being aimed for the software scrap yards.

Maybe a better way to address this concern would be to start developing a new set of questions to make for a fair comparison. For example, I’d suggest:

• How many software enhancements do you receive per/year?
• How many are sitting in your queue?
• How many of those actually make it into a new release of the product?
• In what time frame (from the point submitted to the point they’re in the product)?
• At what cost?
• Will you provide the source code to our institution so that we can develop features we need but that your company is unable to do?
• Can we then share those features with other customers?
• Will you assure us our product will not be terminated without our agreement and with minimal financial impact on our budget?

There are more we could list here, but you get my point and you can read my previous posts (here and here) to see topics that need questions developed in order to have a truly fair comparison of open source and proprietary solutions.

The bottom line here is, as I’ve often said, is that open source is NOT, in-and-of-itself, the end goal of library automation. It is a step on the pathway of software development. What it does, what it is leading us to and what everyone needs to understand is that the open source movement is about customer freedom, customer control and the ability to make sure needs of an organization are addressed in the most financially efficient manner possible for that organization. Open source is NOT going to replace proprietary software. It will change it. In order for that maximum efficiency to be realized, we need to move towards a scenario where core infrastructure should be seen as a commodity and should be open source. Proprietary vendors should develop great new features and functionality on top of that code, as the post that started me down this path describes. That will result in the most efficient use of resources by the vendors and far greater efficiency in the markets they serve. The library marketplace is too small to do this any other way.

Sun Microsystems deserves some recognition and credit for the efforts in bringing attention to an issue that many libraries and librarians have yet to face; that of preserving and archiving all the digital materials libraries are rapidly accumulating. Art Pasquinelli, Education Market Strategist at SUN, has worked closely with Mike Keller, University Librarian at Stanford University to bring together, from around the world, some of the leading thinkers and doers in the field. Two weeks ago, the third meeting of the Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group was held in San Francisco and these meeting just keep getting better. Here is some of the press about the meeting that can be read here and here.

Now, of course, the skeptics among you will say; “Well sure Sun is interested in this, they have some hardware they’d like to sell us.” Which is, of course, true, but that minimizes the terrific contribution Sun is making in organizing, helping to sponsor and focusing on a critically important issue to libraries.

Based on my experience, all too often, in talking with libraries about their repository plans, when we get to the subject of how they plan to handle preservation and archiving needs, there is a pause in the conversation. Too many still think that the very act of digitizing is preservation. This is through no fault of their own, it’s just a clear indication of the need for education on the issue and is the reason I want to single out Sun’s efforts for recognition. Because of Sun’s efforts, that education is happening. They’ve done this by identifying on a global basis, those who are carving the pathways, leading the efforts and experimenting with ideas and techniques to ensure that items digitized are, in fact, usable well into the future. They’re bringing these people together to develop best practices that can be shared with the rest of the profession. They’re developing both hardware and releasing open source software to meet the needs that are being identified.

Sun has launched both a website and a WIKI where the work of the PASIG (Preservation & Archiving Special Interest Group) is being documented and further discussions encouraged. There are a number of working groups (Long term storage and data migration, Preservation, Enterprise repositories and federated repositories, Research data repositories and ST5800 based architectures) that have been formed and there is room for both those who are doing things and those who want to learn. The publication page is also worth a visit.

Librarians owe Sun, Art Pasquinelli and Mike Keller a huge thanks for what they’re doing here. While I can’t speak for any of them, I’m pretty sure the best thanks they could get is for you to take them up on the opportunity they’re providing and get involved.

In my local paper today (Roanoke Times, Sunday, March 16, 2008) was an editorial about a library program that concluded with the statement “They should continue to do (the program), but not in its current form.” That is a telling statement and that same statement could be made about a lot of librarianship today.

Maurice Line, in his article Librarianship as it is practiced: a failure of intellect, imagination and initiative says:

“Unless we can see our future in a far broader context, we may not have a future. Our territory is being lost while we think we are defending it, because ware defending the form and not the substance, and the substance is changing.”

It seems to me one way that could be done is for libraries to realize that the same forces that are creating open source; interoperability, collaboration, flexibility, sustainability, and service for the customer are forces that could also have an interesting result if applied to librarianship. The result of the combination of these forces is community. It is power through collaboration. It builds on the fact that the cost of communication today is so near to zero, that we have a tightly interlinked global society that can share, enhance and implement ideas quickly. It means that whoever can do something, DOES it. It means that everyone quickly benefits in the result (not just the producer). User needs are more quickly communicated, understood and acted upon. Bottom line, the community of users has become the community of doers. How can we apply that to librarianship?

Let’s start with the question; what is librarianship? The “Classic” definition of librarianship, from Wikipedia, is:

“A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is, simply stated, the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs.”

However, let me possibly restate the obvious here and point out that librarians are increasingly NOT the owners of information any more. Just like companies supporting open source do not own the software they distribute and/or host, the same is true of libraries. Information is everywhere and in abundance. I’m frequently puzzled when I hear librarians express concern that their materials budgets are being cut and they can’t add as many resources as they did in the previous year. Really? Librarians actually have access to more information resources than they’ve ever had and most of it is free. All they have to do is use it. It can still be supplemented with the licensed and held information that does sit in their libraries.

Librarians still organize physical information, but as we all know, digital content is growing fast and is the form in which most information is now created, or migrating, and will continue to exist well into the future. The problem is that librarians aren’t organizing nearly enough of that information. In addition, their processes won’t scale to handle the amount of digital content that we have. One way that it might be possible is if librarians adopted the principles of open source and engaged the community of users in these processes (more on this in a moment).

It’s also important to remember, that in most cases, as librarians you’re physically not going to be where the users are when they come into contact with information. That’ll only happen, when you can be there virtually.

Just like what is happening with Open Source Software and like what you’re seeing with companies like Index Data, Equinox, LibLime and CARE Affiliates, librarianship needs to become a set of premium services, only based on information instead of software.

Given that, I continue to be amazed that what is built at OCLC and by many proprietary vendors are products and services for librarians when what we should be building are primarily products and services for users.

Is that harsh? Let’s look at a couple of examples:

1. Reference Services. If a user has a question, they have numerous options for getting an answer today. As we all know, Google is likely the first stop for many people. According to OCLC’s surveys, some very small percentage of users will start at a library website. In between is a wide range of services, ranging from Amazon’s Askville to ChaCha’s Guided Search Service to OCLC’s QuestionPoint that will provide answers to a users question. I would encourage the reader to look at and compare each of these services as it is terribly insightful in understanding what I’m describing. Askville and ChaCha both use community in helping people get answers to their questions. QuestionPoint uses only librarians. Which do you think will be more successful?

2. Inter-Library Loan. Look at what LibraryThing and OpenLibrary or Google Books are doing. They all put the emphasis on access to the item. If you can wait, you can get it from free if your local library has it, or if you want it quickly, sometimes for a cost, it can potentially be delivered to you wherever you are. Which might mean downloading the PDF, or printing it, printing on demand for a cost or buying a publisher copy for a fee. However, you get the item. Now compare that with our traditional ILL processes which are typically, mediated, slow and often involve “deflection” policies to bounce the request around to other places in order to get it filled. However it’s done, it is normally not nearly as fast as these other competing services.

I could go on, but you get the point. Our libraries of today, their organizations, associations and proprietary vendors seem only to want to crack the doors, not open them! Its time we create OpenLibrarianship, a new model of librarianship that embraces the power of community, the ideas of Web 2.0 and the ideas that have created open source for the benefit of all. Here is just a quick list of starter ideas for consideration:

1. Why don’t we, as library professionals, set up community site and ask communities of online users what they want their library to do for them? Let’s draft some of the best and the brightest people in the field to start the conversations. Let’s get a conversation going.

2. Why not allow your library users to enter their book/serials collections in your catalog (like LibraryThing or maybe in conjunction with LibraryThing) AND for those that agree, let them loan those items to others using your ILS?

3. Open up the doors of your library and allow anyone who wants to use your library and its resources to do so. If they’re not a resident or a student, use a credit card as the basis for service.

4. For those that haven’t already, offer repository services and allow anyone who wants to enter objects into it (as long as it meets certain basic policy guidelines) to do so. Encourage them to enter their family histories, local history, and genealogy; anything unique to your community that would be of interest to others. We tend to make repositories very difficult to get things in and to open them up!

5. Put librarians where users have information needs, for instance in local bookstores. Maybe it’s a real person; maybe it’s a chat service on the bookstore PC. Cut a deal with the bookstores and have any sale that results from the librarian’s advice, result in your library getting a small percentage of the sale to cover the cost of the person offering that service. Bookstores are libraries without librarians. Fix that.

6. Organize the digital information on the Web. Apply your skills to building subject portals and/or search tools that do the same. Look at the Hiking Outpost website as a partial example of what libraries could be doing.

7. Allow users to send you a copy of their self-published books and create catalog records for them. Put them in WorldCat. There are many websites for self-publishing. Cut deals with those operations, like you have with Amazon, where you get a percentage of any sale that results from the user finding the item as a result of the metadata records you’ve created.

8. Rethink ILL. Get out of the way of the users and let them handle the service themselves! Yes, there are costs involved, let your users decide if it is worthwhile and if it is, let them enter their credit card to cover those costs. The only acceptable result is to get your user the information they need, in some usable form, in “x” days! I don’t care if it’s a PDF, the physical item, or some other digital form. Get it to them. “Deflection policies” are NOT a way to increase your fill rates, not really…

9. Open up your acquisitions selection and approval process. Make it web-based and let representative users vote on what gets added to your library and what doesn’t. Get them involved.

10. Get your library catalog plugged into every e-learning system in your area! It is anathema to me that, from within online courses, I can’t search and access library resources. If your system doesn’t support this, begin the process of replacing your system!

11. Why not offer extensive metadata for on items to Ebay (start with the books)? Why not help them sell their book, video and related collections by making them more findable using all this metadata you’ve spent years and fortunes in creating? Again, a deal with Ebay could result in revenue.

12. Enhance user supplied metadata. Users are now tagging their own digital objects. Offer a service where they can have that metadata reviewed, enhanced, authority services applied, etc. Tagging clouds are a first step and the ability for librarians to enhance their value by the addition of their skills to that data is waiting. Note that is not to say you control it, but you enhance it!

The Web represents the largest library ever known to mankind. It’s global, multi-lingual, and accessible from virtually everywhere and contains all types of content. If you want to be a librarian, then you must understand, that is your collection and that is what you must build your services on if you want to have an increasing role in the future of users.

Now, I know these few ideas obviously ignore political realities, funding issues and some of them might even be plain bad ideas for a host of reasons I’m not even thinking about. That’s really not the point however. The point is to think about all those forces that are bringing you open solutions, open services and yes, open source. They are: choice, collaboration, use of global talent, responsiveness, competition, reduced costs, and returning to the community. Take those forces and use them in conjunction with this starter set of ideas. Improve, delete, contribute, implement, revise them and send them back to the profession of librarianship. It’ll will serve as a good start on using the power of community to start creating OpenLibrarianship.

We found this post on the “Federated Search Blog” about our recent announcement at ALA concerning OpenTranslators. It raises some very important questions, conveys a misunderstanding and possibly some philosophical differences, but the important point is that it provides an opportunity to discuss why we believe OpenTranslators are important.

CARE Affiliates(TM) believes, as does the writer of the Blog above, that the OpenTranslators amounts to something “That… is pretty significant” in the federated searching world. What we did, was to bring together a total of three companies, each contributing expertise, products and ideas to create a new way for users to have access to thousands and thousands of databases, some of which support proprietary API’s of their own, but most of which support no interface at all beyond the end-user HTML interface. These have to be parsed and interpreted to support metasearching. Some represent freely available content, but most are subscription databases of the sort used in the hundreds by a typical library to meet patron needs. So bottom line, what does that mean? It means that the search interface used by your library and thus, your users, is yet further decoupled from the content underneath.

First, a little history. Years ago (and it is still true in some cases) if you wanted to search certain content, you could only do it using the interface provided by the company that assembled that content. The interface and content were tightly coupled. This was very frustrating for users as it meant that for each resource they wanted to use, they likely had to learn a new search interface.

Federated search tools eliminated that problem and allowed a common search interface layer to many resources. This was better for end users who now only had to learn one search interface; that provided by their federated search vendor. The downside was that in order to search to all those content resources, there had to be a translator or connector developed that could talk the language of the original content providers search interface and translate that to the language of the new federated search providers interface. So in the end, the vendors’ translators/connectors were tightly coupled to the vendors’ search interface. The search interface had moved up a layer in the stack, and you as the customer had more options/choices, but we saw the possibility to provide even more choices.

Our colleagues at Index Data(TM) had built software to take SRU/SRW/Z39.50 searches and translate them for use with translators/connectors. Couple that with the fact that we had signed a deal with WebFeat(TM) in August of 2007 that allowed us to sell their translators with our products. We did (and do) this with the metasearch/federated search application called MasterKey.

While we thought it was very progressive of WebFeat to allow us to couple an OSS based metasearch/federated search solution to their translators, all three companies had a vision of carrying the concept yet further. Why not take the Index Data SRU/SRW/Z39.50 translators, couple them with WebFeat’s translators and allow the end user to pick the metasearch interface of their choice? It could be their existing OPAC. It could be anything that could talk SRU/SRW/Z39.50; a large and growing selection of software products, both open and proprietary; it could even include homegrown applications and mashups. It would mean that we had yet further decoupled content from the search interface and were putting total control of the interface selected into the hands of the customers. That was the basis of the OpenTranslators announcement.

Now, with that history and background, let’s answer some of the questions/points raised in the Blog post that started this conversation.

First, we want to offer a correction to the statement that “WebFeat has a large number of translators (connectors to SRU/SRW/Z39.50 databases).” Actually, Webfeat has translators to thousands of databases that are licensed, proprietary content, the vast majority of which are NOT accessible through SRU/SRW/Z39.50. Only with the announcement of OpenTranslators does that become true.

“1. How “open” are these OpenTranslators?” Our response is that what is “Open” is that we’ve taken open standards and enabled access to the translators. As a result this allows you to leverage existing software applications, programmer’s toolkits, as well as writing your own applications to interact with the translators, through SRU/SRW/Z39.50. Yes, the translators themselves incorporate proprietary technology and will continue to do so. Anyone who has tried to develop a translator will know it is a complicated and demanding process, and that the final product requires constant monitoring and maintenance because back-end interfaces are subject to change at any moment.  Consequently, it is an application that is ideally suited to operate as a hosted service, where revenues is earned from keeping the translators up-to-date and backed bu sufficient CPU cycles to meet requirements.

It is also important to note that we’ve always said that while we believe in OSS, we also know and understand there will be times where we will need to marry OSS and proprietary technologies to provide a total solution. So, bottom line, what we’ve done, is to expose proprietary technology through open, standards-based protocols as a way for end users to pick the metasearch/federated search interface of their choice and still have access to vast amounts of content. It allows developers to focus more attention on interfaces and usability, and less on sorting out how to access a given database. It also dramatically opens the field of search-oriented projects that may be undertaken either by libraries or by startup companies. We believe that this is a dramatic step and one that qualifies as “open”. (We’ll expand on this later in this posting).

“2. How does access to content work when authentication is involved if the connectors to the SRU/SWR/Z39.50 database are WebFeat connectors and there’s a CARE/Index Data gateway in between?” When the service is configured for a customer, WebFeat handles authentication against each database on behalf of the customer. All you need to provide to the OpenTranslator is a customer ID, which is provided to you when you sign on.

“3. What will access cost? What is the licensing model?” As noted elsewhere in the original blog posting, this is a hosted service, so what customers pay is an annual subscription to use both the CARE/ID OpenTranslators and the WebFeat translators. The cost is based on the number of translators used and, as with most such services, the more you buy, the cheaper they get. One yearly cost covers both subscriptions. Interested parties should contact CARE Affiliates for a quote.

“4. Are there really 10,000 databases accessible from this service as advertised in the press release?” WebFeat states that they have 9,000+ databases in their translator library and Index Data provides many thousands more pure Z39.50 connectors. Together, it totals over 10,000. Do some of those databases come from the same content providers? Sure. Like every industry, once you get good at something, you tend to acquire similar companies and the result has been that there is no longer one company per database, nor should there be. Cost efficiencies result from using the same infrastructure to supply access to many different kinds of content. This helps keep costs down for the end users.

“5. Who is hosting access? Is there a plan to handle scaling of the service if it becomes real popular?” Both CARE/Index Data and WebFeat use hosting centers. These kinds of companies offer real benefits for these types of services because they offer redundant processors, telecommunication lines, mirrored disks and instant fail-overs. Plus, they can add additional capacity, usually within hours of a request. So, are we well positioned to scale this service? Absolutely, we’ve planned for it and we’re counting on it.

So, here is a reason why we think OpenTranslators are so important. For OSS to go beyond being an academic practice; beyond being an activity practiced in basements in people’s spare time; and finally beyond being just the sexy word that it is at the moment, then it’s really important that we work out ways to make OSS (and for that matter, open standards, which is really a variation on the theme) coexist with, and indeed support commercial activities. Ultimately that is how things will get done and how usable products will result.

We’re looking for as many areas of synergy as we can, rather than painting OSS as being a threat or even necessarily a total alternative to commercial players. We believe it *should* be viewed as a threat to the stale business practices of many current vendors, but it shouldn’t be viewed as being in opposition to commercial endeavors. OpenTranslators make important headway not only because of what it does for metasearch/federated searching, but also as an example of how total solutions can be assembled using best-of-breed products and companies to deliver what customers want, directly to their desktops. We are crossing new ground that will lead to better products and services for everyone. That is what OpenTranslators do and why they are important.

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…

I participated in a TALIS podcast that was just recently published and which I found quite interesting. Launched by Roy Tennant’s Library Software Manifesto, the podcast brought together a mix of knowledgeable individuals, from varying points of view, to discuss the relationship between libraries and their software vendors. I think I had too much coffee that morning and, as a result, was pretty wound up on the topic (it is one of my favorites). But when others got a chance to talk, they raised a variety of interesting and contrasting points of views, some of which I hope I shed some light upon, others that were thoughtful and worthy of much more reflection on my part. It was a very good experience and I tip my hat to all the other participant’s for taking the time to share their thoughts in this forum and for not telling me to be quiet so they could talk.

I’ve now been working in the open source movement long enough to know that there is one question that will always get asked by those thinking about open source software as a solution: “What are the risks of using open source?”

Fair enough.

Answers to this question tend towards the extreme. On the one hand, there are open source zealots who sometimes claim there is little or no risk to using open source software. Making that kind of claim almost always sets off alarms in the listener’s mind because, as we all know, there is risk to everything. The question is how much and where? On the other extreme, many in the proprietary realm are quick to attribute risks that aren’t valid, are based on outdated information or that occur with all software projects (including their software). So, what’s the truth?

I’ve heard many times, having worked in the software business for more decades than I care to count, that “software is hard.” Never has a truer statement been made. A brutal statistic, but one that applies to both proprietary and open source software is that something like 90%-95% of all software projects that are started, fail. For one reason or another, the project never makes it to completion or if it does, is not adopted by enough people to make it viable. The difference is that those that fail behind the doors of proprietary businesses are not talked about (few business ever advertise their internal failures!). Whereas, those that happen in the open source software field are out there for everyone to see and examine and point towards. So, let’s just take that statistic as a given with the understanding it is common to all software.

Here are some areas of risk that may apply to open source software:

1. Licenses. There are a lot of open source licenses out there, each a bit different from its brethren. Why? Because each license meets a different need. When adopting open source software, the license should be examined for suitability for your organization. Just because a product says it is open source, that does not mean you can do anything you want with it. Licenses impose obligations and because there are different types of open sources licenses, there are different types of obligations to be observed and met. For instance, many open source licenses have no imposed fees as long as the organization using it is a non-for-profit or educational organization. However, if you’re a for-profit business, that may not apply and fees could be involved. Bottom line; as with any software product, read the license and know what you’re agreeing to before you start using the product. If you find the product uses the GPL license, as do many in the library open source arena, you’re pretty safe.
   

2. Intellectual Property. First of all, it’s very important to note that those who use commercial vendors for support and development of open source can largely skip this point altogether because they assume this responsibility for you. However, if your organization is participating in writing code for an open source project — particularly if you’re supervising such a project – it really pays to sit down with the staff doing the code development and be sure they understand their obligation to ensure they don’t copy code, intellectual property or other protected or proprietary ideas from others and place them into the open source they’re developing, if that code or concept doesn’t come with a license that permits it. Of course, we should also point out that organizations doing proprietary code development have the same obligation concerning open source software, i.e. they aren’t supposed to copy OSS code and insert it in proprietary products without paying attention to whether or not the license permits this to happen. We’ve seen some high profile cases, involving some big companies where some of these scenarios have happened and so it would be naive to think it can’t happen to smaller organizations.
   

3. Not Planning for Upgrades and Support. Some organizations download and run open source software without commercial support and when that is done, they must also know they take on the obligation to plan for the upgrades and support as they are issued by the community behind the product. This ranges from monitoring security patches to functional enhancements and implementing them as appropriate. If your organization is unwilling to commit to this step, then it is a very good reason to work with a commercial vendor for support and maintenance so that this gets done. Not planning for the provision of upgrades and support can leave your organization vulnerable. Working with a commercial vendor makes sure this far less likely to happen if you follow their recommendations. Even then it should be pointed out that ultimately every organization with an IT operation requires a both security and upgrade management plan and in that regard, open source is really, no different than proprietary software.

4. Development without Engagement. Open source software is the result of a community of people collaborating to produce the product. If you’re downloading and using open source software because you want to change it to meet your needs, then you should engage in that community. Community is a huge part of what open source software is all about and to simply use it without engaging is considered at best, impolite and at worse, inappropriate and risky. Risky because if, in-house customized development veers too far from the project code, you may have difficulties easily applying patches, updates and upgrades issued by the larger community. Here again, if you’re developing but buying commercial support and advocacy for your package, then this role can be taken care of by your commercial vendor (and it is certainly worth asking about this when selecting that vendor!).
   

5. “Ready, fire, aim!” One of the joys of open source software is the fact that it can be downloaded, worked with, evaluated and then, sometimes unfortunately put to immediate use. However, as the old military saying at the start of this section indicates, this skips a critical step and one that can ultimately endanger the success of the project and make the organization hesitant to try open source in the future (”We tried that once and it didn’t work…”). So what is the missing step? A product must be evaluated against a complete set of criteria. The criteria must represents the needs of both the ultimate end users and the organization putting the product into place for those users. It should look at the community and organization(s) behind the open source product and evaluate them as well. (Andrew Pace wrote an interesting post about one aspect of this.) More than once, we’ve seen an OSS solution downloaded and fired up; usually because it was very easy to do and conceptually showed what was possible, but then once the IT group has it running it then gets turned over to the staff; the staff then leaps in and starts using it in production mode. As a result, it is possible to encounter major issues ranging from needed but missing functionality,to scalability, to selecting a product without a viable community behind it; all the result of not doing a thorough and proper evaluation to make sure needs would be met. Again, it is important to note here that using a commercial vendor who specializes in helping organizations through this process is, for many, a very wise investment.

So, here’s the bottom line folks; are there risks with open source software? Yes. Are they any greater than proprietary software? No. Are they less than proprietary software? Very likely, but even here it depends on your organizational needs. Are they different? Yes, in some aspects they are different.

As with anything else, risk always involves two things: 1) risk assessment and 2) risk mitigation. I’ve tried to, in the above, help you know some areas to perform risk assessment. My next post will be how to manage and/or mitigate those risks.

Ever since I’ve entered the open source movement full bore, I’ve heard about the book “The Cathedral & The Bazaar” by Eric Raymond. I recently purchased and read the book and now I fully understand why it is mentioned and referenced so frequently. It is both insightful and enlightening. Some sections of this book particularly hit home for me. Personally having a long career in library automation, when I read some of his observations I could have sworn he was writing about the library automation market. Allow me to share with you a few of his observations so you’ll understand why I say this:

“When a software product’s vendor goes out of business (or if the product is merely discontinued), the maximum prices consumers will pay for it rapidly falls to near zero regardless of it’s theoretical use value or the development cost of a functional equivalent”… (this is very revealing, as it shows) “the price a consumer will pay is effectively capped by the expected future value of vendor service (where “service” is here construed broadly to include enhancements, upgrades and follow-on projects). In other words, software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry.”

He goes on to say:

“..Even though software is a service industry, the incentives in the manufacturing model all work against a vendor’s offering competent service. If the vendor’s money comes from selling bits, most effort will go into making bits and shoving them out the door; the help desk, not a profit center, will become a dumping ground for the least effective employees and get only enough resources to avoid actively alienating a critical number of customers.”… “Most vendors buying this factory model will also fail in the longer run. Funding indefinitely-continuing support expenses from a fixed price is only viable in a market that is expanding quickly enough to cover the support and life cycle costs entailed in yesterday’s sales with tomorrow’s revenues. Once a market matures and sales slow down, most vendors will have no choice but to cut expenses by orphaning the product… In the long run, therefore, the only way to escape is to have no competitors– that is to have an effective monopoly on one’s market. In the end, there can be only one.”

He further notes:

“To handle the real cost structures of the software life cycle efficiently, we require a price structure founded on service contracts, subscriptions, and a continuing exchange of value between vendor and customer.”

Those sections seemed to me to describe a large amount of what we’ve seen happen in the library automation field and certainly what I’ve seen, felt and thought having worked for a large number of vendors on the proprietary software side of the field. How much would any library today spend for a Taos or Horizon system? Zero. Because there is no service to be had, no new development, not even a way to do development or maintain the products if one had the development resources to put into the product. Even though those products offer technological advancements over the products the customers ended up buying to replace them!

Over and over, it has felt to me that the ownership of many of the companies I’ve worked for were far too focused on selling over service and the results were frustrated company owners, company staff and very frustrated customers. One only need to review the annual automation reviews done by Marshall Breeding (or others), to see that the library automation industry has been stuck in the $500M range for over a decade. Clearly, it is a market that isn’t expanding in a way that will support the selling model used by the majority of the proprietary software companies. As Raymond describes, as a result we’ve seen continuing consolidation of those companies focused on selling rather than service. While we’re not down to one yet, I’d feel confident in saying the consolidation of those types of companies is far from over.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen the birth of numerous companies now focused on service surrounding open source software in what may potentially be the rebirth of the library automation marketplace under a new, more viable business model. While it is too early to say if those new companies have found a truly viable business model, it inherently feels like one that is focused on the right value exchange between the libraries and their vendors. Perhaps an important question librarians should now be asking their vendors is: “Who are the highest paid the people in your organization? Your salespeople or your service people?” The answer could be very illuminating. If it’s the salespeople (and I’d be willing to predict that in today’s market, 95% of the vendors will answer the salespeople it they’re answering honestly) one has to then wonder why libraries are surprised when they encounter less than satisfactory service from their selected vendor.

It has been noted many times that libraries vote with their dollars. Maybe it is now time for the libraries to exercise that vote and indicate if they agree or disagree with these observations.