It would appear I am completing week three during week seven. 89th place, here I come!
I was going to write about HDTV as "anything technology-related" in response to Melissa's post about remastered Star Trek, but I found myself haranguing poor Patrick this afternoon in a comment on his blog and chose to reproduce that here, instead. Read his post on the Koha Open Source Integrated Library System, which has generated a lot of buzz this year, followed by my response:
Koha has a lot of potential, but there are some considerations I'd like to point out:
(1) We do not know for sure that it is "much cheaper." ILS costs depend on the size of the system, so a price quoted by a smaller library using open source would not apply to SPPL. We do not necessarily have anyone on staff qualified to maintain Koha, so migrating to Koha would likely require SPPL to establish a position description and budget to support a dedicated Systems Administrator. Additionally, we would be paying LibLime, Equinox (who work with Evergreen open source ILS), or some other company to offer training and support in addition to the Systems Admin. Koha itself may be free, but there are startup and maintenance costs associated with migration, new servers, etc. How these costs compare to our current III costs is unknown.
(2) Koha lacks some important features we get from III, especially on the Acquisitions side. It may not yet be fully-featured enough to meet SPPLs needs.
(3) Quality control. I don't find this Koha Zoom site to be particularly stellar, nor this similar OPAC. There isn't a whole lot of difference between these implementations and many of the "out-of-the-box" III OPACs you see out there. Systems with dedicated staff and money for R&D get much better performance out of Koha.
(4) Security/vulnerability. Does using Open Source software expose SPPL to hacking?
(5) III does have a new product called "Encore" which replicates many of the Koha OPAC features Patrick likes, although, granted, it is ridiculously expensive. Features such as reviews and book jacket covers are a subscription service which will cost extra no matter which system we're using.
(6) Will there be long term support for Koha? Joshua Ferraro (founder of LibLime) describes himself as Koha's "benevolent dictator" and says that Koha's success relies on the "spirit of cooperation," which sounds a bit flimsy.
That's not to say we should never consider open source, but it isn't necessarily a panacea, either.
...
My general feeling is that Open Source is not ready for prime-time, unless you've got incredible resources and professional programmers on staff (or a very small library system). Open Source ILSs are certainly worth keeping an eye on, and I do believe the future of library science rests with librarians (and faux-brarians) getting hands-on with the architecture of information technology -- though I'm not necessarily volunteering to run out and get a computer science degree. Any takers?
hello.
5 comments:
Now that my revolutionary fervor has worn off, I can see that you raise a number of valid points. However, I still believe that it would be remiss of us not to give it earnest consideration.
Joshua Ferraro, who I admit is hardly impartial, did give an awfully persuasive seminar. My readiness to jump aboard, though, has as much to do with my frustration with Millennium's inadequacies as it does anything to do with Koha.
I hereby swear never to prefix your name with "poor" again.
I hereby swear from here on out to refer to you as 'poor patrick'
And yes, I realize this has nothing to do with your original post.
I think Worldcat Local looks kinda cool.
Post a Comment