Stuff we do with OSS in libraries (Bergen, 2009)

The stuff we do with OSS in libraries Nicolas Morin [email_address]

Program
BibLibre
Koha: why was it a success in France so far?
Evergreen: short intro
Drupal:
drupal/sopac
drupal/lucene/solr

BibLibre

BibLibre history
Early involvement in Koha
Paul Poulain in 2002
Nicolas Morin as translator in 2003
Henri-Damien Laurent as developer in 2005
Paul Poulain R. Manager versions 2.x
Henri R. Maintainer version 3.0.x

BibLibre now
Incorporated oct. 2007
Headcount now 10:
3 librarians
7 developers
Business in 6 countries in 2009
Turnover :
x2 from 2007 to 2008
x2 from 2008 to 2009
We're growing as slowly as possible

What we do
We're not a « koha vendor », we provide services for libraries with Open Source :
Koha
Evergreen
Drupal
On-demand development / Consulting

Why was Koha a success in France?

Koha (in France)
2002 : Internationalisation and norms ( Uni marc)
2003 : 1 st (small) libraries in France
2006 : 1 st (bigger) public library in France (170.000 records) -> Mover&Shaker
2008 : 1 st (bigger) university library in France (800.000 records)

Why is Koha a success in France?
Koha's a good product, and now mature
proprietary vendors « misbehaving »:
ILS stops
vendor acquired by competitor
Feeling among libraries that products didn't really take on the web before it was too late
maintenance fees universally percieved as excessive and not providing value-for-money

We created a vendor!
Without a vendor, OSS in libraries stays on the outskirts
Management issue : buy maintenance, cover your ass
Tech issues :
Level of IT to become an expert on any given ILS is too big
Libraries tend to do OSS themselves when a commercial solution doesn't exist

a few militant libraries are pushing for an alternative relationship between libraries and vendors -> kohala: French not-for-profit includes:
developpers of Koha
users of Koha
people merely interested in Koha
=> not a one-to-one relationship between library and vendor

general evolution from IT as a set of tools to IT as a service
A lot of the data is outside the library (Google, Elsevier, etc...)
On the web, tools age very quickly
-> requires a lot of Human ressources that libraries don't necessarily have -> OSS adapts well to this new situation : we don't sell a tool, we sell services

Koha tends to bring the price down :
Cost of development shared
A lot of lightweight companies (little overhead costs)
We don't have bad habits nor VCs behind us and are often militants of OSS
vendors lower their prices in reaction

Why is Koha a success in France? We do a lot of Community Work
H-D. Laurent (BibLibre): R. Maintainer 3.0
BibLibre runs mailing lists
BibLibre runs koha-fr.org (french community site)
BibLibre sponsors Nicole's work on documentation
=> Or : if you want to harness the power of the community, you have to give back

Market for IT in Libraries in France in 2008 :
Down -7% at 42 m€
open source IT projects : +75% from 2007
« les temps demeurent cependant difficiles pour les petites et moyennes sociétés du secteur et pour quelques rares grandes entreprises qui n’arrivent pas à faire face au développement des logiciels libres. » Marc Maisonneuve, Tosca, March 2009 (in LH 767)

Evergreen

Evergreen Oct. 2009 : agreement to provide support for Evergreen and help Evergreen grow in Europe

Evergreen
Dev. Started 2004
li ve Sept. 2006 (PINES):
40+ PL systems, 250+ outlets
14+ million circs
statewide resource-sharing network
=> Designed to be robust and scalable => http://open-ils.org/

Evergreen notable features
R ich, highly flexible policy control
Marc21 Holdings records (serials)
Clustering options (load balancing, failover, etc.)
Release 2.0 (2010)
Acquisitions Second Release (including EDI support)
Serials
More language sets

Evergreen Evergreen Academic or PL consortia August 1, 2009 December 31, 2009 Conifer 4 4 Evergreen Indiana 38 52 Michigan Evergreen 9 11 NTLC 13 PINES 51 51 SC LENDS 3 10 SITKA 18 30 Spruce 1 1 Tsuga 1 1 (Independent) 4 5 Totals 129 178

Evergreen opac

Evergreen staff search

Evergreen staff circ

Drupal related stuff

Drupal
http://www.drupal.org
MySQL/PHP
Highly Modular & flexible / slightly complex
Good separation data / workflows / presentation
-> it's a CMS and a development framework

Drupal

SOPAC - What does it try to achieve?
http://thesocialopac.net
#1 perfect graphical integration between the catalog UI and the library's Drupal web site
#2 add « social » functionalities to the OPAC:
tags
reviews
ratings
rss
#3: pools social data together (remote server - Insurge)
=> SOPAC replaces and enhances your OPAC

Limits of Sopac
Sopac perfect when used as is but...
Not fully integrated with Drupal
Ratings / comments coded in sopac
Web pages and biblio cannot share tags/comments/stars, etc.
2 search forms (sopac + drupal)
Display hardcoded in sopac (doesn't take advantage of drupal code – views anyone?)
Doesn't interact with cool drupal modules like RDF, RSS, etc.

Limits of Sopac (2)
Search engine (sphinx)
Facets are hardcoded
Some functionalities missing (« more like this »)
Items and subjects managed within biblio
=> not integrated in Drupal vs Drupal dependent

Work on « Drupac »
Positives
Lucene / solr (see blacklight, VuFind, etc...)
Each record a web page (CCK fields)
Uses drupal modules (stars, comments, etc)
Uses drupal Views to create different views of records
Negatives
sharing of social aspects (Insurge) lost for the time being ( wasn't used yet in Sopac )
Drupal dependant ( eh, we like this, actually; is that a negative? )

Lucene/solr
Spellchecker
Suggestions (did you mean...?)
Facets

Lucene/solr
Spellchecker
Facets
Field weighting

Lucene/solr
Spellchecker
Facets
Field weighting
Index definition

Lucene/solr
Spellchecker
Facets
Field weighting
Index definition
Drupal Views

« Drupac »

« Drupac »
Very flexible
Can scale
Code quality and maintainability + : reuse of Lucene / solr /drupal code

Conclusion
OS solutions for libraries :
Small libraries -> big libraries
Use as is -> custom stuff
Fairly usual (ILS) -> advanced stuff (lucene/solr)

Thanks for listening. Questions? Objections? Remarks? Contributions? [email_address]

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Stuff we do with OSS in libraries (Bergen, 2009)

by Nicolas Morin on Nov 12, 2009

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