Breaking the Barriers – RIBA – 18th May 2009

Recently I was asked to attend a day conference at the Royal Institute for British Architects in London looking at how Open source software is influencing the library and information community.

It was well worth the trip so I’ve posted my summaries of each of the talks here.  Slides and further information may also be found on the open libraries website.

Charles Leadbeater (Keynote) – Generally thinks that the web is a good thing andthat future media oriented businesses will be organised around collaborative experiences with their customers, open source providing a means to achieve
this. Open source is a new form of social organisation and provides a richer form of capitalism. Larger businesses that focus only on content delivery will struggle.
We should be looking at the way young people, for example the ’26 year old research scientist’ to inform us about how people will use technology in the future.
It came across that he felt libraries should be using technology to engage collaboratively with their customers to garner success.

Ken Chad – Was interrupted by a fire alarm but was otherwise generally enthusing about how Open source technology in libraries was no longer a theory but a demonstrable reality.

Mike Taylor – Index data – Probably the most vehement open source promoter of the day, explained how businesses could be relied upon to build a robust business model around giving away software but not giving away time spent supporting it. Although by admission not a rich man he was perfectly correct and probably the most engaging speaker of the day.

Bob Molyneux – Equinox software – Using figures from the take up of Evergreen Integrated Library System demonstrated that complete open source ILS systems do exist and can work. Evergreen ILS seems largely to be used by Public libraries in North America however and it became apparent that there was no obvious translation of that success to Academic libraries in the UK.

Paul Polain – BibLibre – A very interesting speaker demonstrating Koha ILS software and touching on how his company had formed a business model around supporting it. This was the beginning of a theme for the day – using open source products does not necessarily mean that they have to be supported in house. Support can be contracted in from specialist companies elsewhere.

Nick Dimant – PTFS Europe – Carried on the previous theme with explanation of how PTFS had grown in Europe supporting Evergreen and Koha. Seemed keen to press a reminder that by choosing open solutions a customer was not tied in to any particular vendor of a product and was free to choose the best provider of support.

Mark Hughes and Paul Johnson – South West Wales Higher Education Partnership – Provided evidence of a successful implementation of VuFind producing an integrated resource discovery suite of three universities. Reminded us all of well known problems with Open source projects including a lack of documentation.

Alan Poulter – Strathclyde University – Spoke less about Open source itself but rather how Koha was being used as a teaching tool on Strathclyde’s Digital Libraries MSc Course. In fact he caused the most active discussion of the day around the apparent lack of overlapping knowledge between IT and library professionals. Concerns were raised that new librarians did not have the IT skills required to support them in the changing library environment and that where IT skills were being taught, they were largely theoretical practices and out of date.

Tamar Sadek – Ex Libris – Went to great pains to play down the bad guy image of proprietary providers. Explained how Ex Libris aimed to provide “Complete” library software solutions that were robust due to their vendor support and expand upon them using donated code and a kind of developer network that Ex Libris are supporting. It seemed impressive from what I saw. No attempt to argue
against Open source or in favour of proprietary solutions. Stated, thankfully, that they have improved their own documentation process.

Richard Wallis – Talis – Took the Ex Libris approach explaining how proprietary and Open source could coexist. Demonstrated the Juice project and how it can enhance library OPAC systems such as Talis giving a web 2.0 feel to an OPAC by mashing up content from Amazon and Google etc.
Presented the Jangle project as an attempt to expose library content via a consistent interface over the myriad of protocols available today. Something the repository project might benefit from in the future.