Session 1 - Charles Leadbeater
Charles Leadbeater opened the conference with his keynote talk about the rise of mass collaboration. Charles said his presentation was a watered down version of his book, and there is a overview of this book within the following video.
Charles spoke about web2.0 systems and how they are manipulated and changed by users and implementers over time. He said that if a web2.0 system was being used as was first intended then it misses the point and doesn't really work at all. He talked about the future of the web and outlined five popular beliefs about what the web will become:
- The web will remain much as it is now.
- The web will become much bigger, but changes in the way we use it will take 50-60 years to proliferate, rendering the changes useless.
- The web will become much bigger, but also less secure, have less trust, and output resources of less quality.
- The web will become much bigger and also promote choice, innovation, collaborative working, and freedom to exchange information and resources.
- The web sill become much bigger, but will be administered by large organisations and governments to prevent issues of information abuse.
Charles concluded with two points about the importance of open source software:
- Open source tools will grow to rival and eventually supersede proprietary software and should be seen as a way of thinking and behaving rather than just a software choice.
- Open source software should be promoted within third world countries to bridge the technology gap by providing innovative low cost solutions.
Session 2 - Ken Chad
Ken Chad's s session was interrupted by a fire alarm and as such was cut short. What Ken did manage to say was that breaking down the barriers to communication is key to breaking down the barriers of open source software adoption. He questioned whether the proprietary library software market failing is failing and open source software is filling that gap. He suggested that support issues were no longer a barrier as there are now many third-party companies available to support open source systems.
Session 3 - Bob Molyneux
Bob Molyneux spoke about his involvement with the open source LMS system: Evergreen . Evergreen started life as a project top bring small libraries within the state of '' into a consortium using the same system. There were originally 40 systems supporting some 200 libraries. Since then many organisations have adopted this open source LMS making it one of the largest open source LMS systems in the world. However this system has one major drawback in as much as it doesn't support Acquisitions.
Session 4 - Mike Taylor
Mike Taylor decided not to talk about what open source as he believes that everyone now understands what open source is and what its benefits are. Instead he offered the statement: "It is not should we adopt open source software, but how can we adopt open source software". Mike talked about his company and how it makes money when its primary aim is to give away its software as open source. In their model they develop a piece of software that takes a certain amount or work. They can then copy and distribute that software as many times as they like without replicating that first development work. This men as that even if they distribute millions of copies of the software (and the have with the YAZ toolkit) they have still only undergone one piece of development work. However, he said it was only giving away copies of the software and not the ownership. The ownership of the software is still with the company so all they are giving away is the code. He compared this to proprietary software companies how on average generate around 5% of their revenue from license costs. This means that the other 95% is generated from other areas such as ongoing support costs. This means that proprietary software companies could afford to do away with licenses and move their business model away from generating sales to a model based on customer support. Mike concluded by giving some bullet points on what IndexData get from being an open source vendor and how they make their money in this business model:
Open Source gives IndexData:
- Disproportionate Visibility and influence over the market because their software is so widely used
- Trust from customers because of their business ethics
- Less costs because they do not have to spend money on closed-source overheads
- More robust systems because code is improved through peer review
- Time to develop innovative systems
- The chance to be the 'good guy'
IndexData make money by:
- support revenues fro their products
- One off development projects
- Hosting of services for some organisations
- One off Integration projects
- Integration royalties of their products into their systems
Lastly Mike revealed what YAZ stands for: “Yet Another Z39.50 client”
Session 5 - Paul Poulain
Paul Poulain spoke about the SOPAC project to combine the open source LMS Koha with the open source content managemnt system Drupal. The goal of this project was to:
- to seamlessly integrate Koha and Drupal
- To add web2.0 and social network functionality to Koha by using the inherent functions of Drupal
Paul's company BibLibre generate revenue by providing support for SOPAC, Drupal, and Koha. However, Paul did admit that the system is only in its first generation and needs some work before it accomplishes all the aspects of the project.
Session 6 - Nick Wallis
Nick Wallis spoke passionately about how library systems have stagnated over the last few years because of low levels of vendor development and no web2.0 integration. He also spoke about trends in decreasing levels of customer support. This seems to be reflected in the US LMS market were open source library systems now make up the largest proportion of new system installations. There is also a good open source LMS presence in India and France, but minimal presence in the UK sector. Nick stated that on average libraries change their LMS every 5 – 15 years, but it makes no sense to try and accomplish this in isolation. His company PTFS, can be involved in every aspect of LMS installation and support, from tendering and procurement, through to installation, customisation, and training. PTFS supports both open source LMS products and a host of other open source and proprietary products in both standalone and hosted environments. They also provide a 24/7 web and phone support service.
Session 7 - Mark Hughes and Paul Johnson
Mark Hughes and Paul Johnson have been involved with the SWWHEP project from the very beginning. The South West Wales Higher Education Partnership (SWWHEP) was a project to provide a consortia solution to many systems within the three libraries in south west Wales, including the library systems. Shortage of money and distributed systems meant the project had to completed on open systems. The universities of south west Wales had many disparate systems with combined resources totalling:
- 1.2 million items
- 30,000 journal subscriptions
- 2000 study spaces
- 720 student PC's
Session 8 - Alan Poulter
Alan Poulter spoke about his Msc programme at Strathclyde Uni in Library Information and Systems. He talked at length about how he tries to expose his students to as much library technology as possible in order to prepare them for a role in library2.0. Lynne Corrigan form Napier made the statement that a lot of library graduates she deals with are qualifying without enough knowledge of complex computing issues. I myself emailed CILIP some weeks back along these same lines. I pointed out in the email that there needs to be more convergence between the librarian role and the computing systems role and perhaps CILIP should take a lead in promoting this...I have yet to receive a reply.
Session 9 - Tamar Sedah
Tamar Sadeh gave a very defensive talk about how Ex Libris was one of the 'evil' vendors that only sold proprietary software, but was trying to venture into the open platform sphere. Tamar choose her words carefully and skirted around Ex Libris products to favour talking about innovations that customers are making. I think a lack of subject material on open source systems spoke volumes here...but maybe I'm biased.
Session 10 - Richard Wallis
The last session by Richard Wallis was very energetic. Richard spoke about existing library API's and how poor they were, such as:
- Z39.50
- NCIP
- OAI-PMH
- SRU
- DLF ILS-DI
- Proprietary APIs from vendors
He then went on to introduce two open source API's that were started at Talis, but have moved into the open domain:
Jangle is an API that uses ATOMPub to provide consistent, open interfaces to disparate LMS systems. This allows developers to write applications for LMS systems that are platform free.
Juice is a small piece of JavaScript code that can be embedded within an OPAC to provide an easy way to add a multitude of web2.0 functionality.
It is really worth checking out both these applications and how they are being used in innovative ways by libraries around the globe.
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