Librarians Stake Their Future on OSS

Systems Librarian writes "Linux.com is running a story entitled 'Librarians stake their future on open source'. It details a group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service that have developed an open source, enterprise-class library management system that may revolutionize the way large-scale libraries are run. The system is Evergreen. The element of this project that has the participants especially excited is the speed. Previously, if users wanted changes to their systems, they'd be put into an 'enhancement queue'. Now, some features are implemented overnight. From the article: 'In fact, the catalog has many features and innovations that are lacking in non-free systems. It does on-the-fly spellcheck and gives search suggestions and adds additional content, such as book covers, reviews, and excerpts. The Shelf Browser shows items ordered along a virtual shelf built out of the holdings of the entire system. Patrons can create bookbags, which are lists that contain a selected collection of annotated titles. Bookbags can be kept private or shared as a regular Web page or as Atom or RSS feeds.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Of course!

Well, of course a group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service like open source!

Re:Of course!

You'd think that, wouldn't you? I, on the other hand, am actually rather upset at the Gwinnett (note: a county in Georgia) Public Library, because they make digital media [gwinnettpl.org] available only in proprietary DRM'd WMA format. It's bad enough that DRM exists, but it really pisses me off when my taxes are paying for it!

This is nice stuff.

But I don't see those outfits whose clueless managers have taken juicy backhanders from Proprietary Systems®© producers for years making the switch. Do you?

Those Librarians must be gifted!

It details a group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service that have developed an open source, enterprise-class library management system that may revolutionize the way large-scale libraries are run.

The system appears to be pretty complex from the description above. If indeed, it's the group of librarians that developed it, they must be very very gifted. I am trying to see how any of the librarians at my former university would develop a system even half as complex. They did not seem to be all that IT savvy! And by the way, mine was a "prestigious" university in the USA.

But I guess the definition of "enterprise-class" is in itself, subjective.

Re:Those Librarians must be gifted!

Then one day Knuth suddenly appeared on the shelves.

That must have been uncomfortable for him....

Virtual Shelf sounds great

The virtual shelf feature sounds great to me. There's nothing quite like finding the section of the library devoted to the topic you are interested in and browsing through the books. That experience is hard to duplicate on the electronic systems I've used. Now if they'd just add the content online....

Look at the actual system!

Evergreen is available online, have a look yourself: here [gapines.org]

(system seems a little slow already, hopefully this doesn't slashdot it).

Good

It always annoyed me when public money was spent on proprietary software, especially when there already are free solutions that are more secure and full featured. For some reason my local library uses Internet explorer and not Firefox on their computers designated for web access only. It's almost enough for me to try to get elected to the library district.

Re:Good

You're conflating free-as-in-beer with free-as-in-spech.

The OP said "proprietary".

If IE is so free, can you get me the source so I can fix some of the bugs?

it's data entry and physical work, not software

It always annoyed me when public money was spent on proprietary software, especially when there already are free solutions that are more secure and full featured.

This is irrelevant. There WAS no free, more secure, or full featured solution for library management.

Nevermind that most of the cost, at least initially and for the first few years, is NOT the software. About a decade ago when my school went to a computerized system, the cost was mostly in labor.

• The entire card catalog was boxed up and shipped to a company for either data entry or OCR, I don't recall
• Every single book was pulled, barcoded, and had an anti-theft strip (which could be deactivated) inserted into the binding

I don't recall how they managed to link barcodes to books; whether each book was pre-assigned a specific barcode, or barcodes were applied and the system brought into sync via hand entry.

This process took MONTHS and the work of several librarians and the expensive data-entry company.

I can imagine scenarios where you could get 2 dozen volunteers and go shelf by shelf through a library and catalog the collection, but it'd still be a massive undertaking, even for a small library such as one in a high school.

Your only hope is aggressive use of laptops on wireless with barcode scanners, and an ISBN lookup database you can pull, quickly verify the basics, and toss the book on the shelf again (in the proper order.)

Re:it's data entry and physical work, not software

This process took MONTHS and the work of several librarians and the expensive data-entry company.

This seems irrelevant, as most libraries already use computerized systems. So, we're not talking about conversion from a card catalog. The data would already be in a database, and that could be converted pretty easily. It's a much simpler process to change software than to move from card to computers.

Vendor lock-in vs. good customer service

I'm a systems librarian, so I claim to know of what I speak.

Most of it shouldn't even need to be converted. It should be in MARC Bibliographic format, which is generally fairly easy to transfer between databases.

This is true, as far as the bibliographic information goes. There are lots of open-source packages for working with MARC records, like pymarc (Python) [textualize.com] or File_MARC (PHP) [php.net]. But the rest of the system is proprietary: holdings records, (which copies do you hold, in which locations, and where is that copy currently - loaned out, lost, on reserve, etc), circulation records, user records, acquisitions records. Sure, it's all just a database schema mapping exercise, if your vendor's license allows you to touch that data directly. Sadly, the past generation of libraries seems to have accepted vendor lock-in as a matter of course; a mistake that we're paying for now and which led directly to the development of Evergreen.

But really, let's be realistic. The major OPAC package is Voyager, which runs on top of Oracle, so runs on anything that runs Oracle. Libraries that don't have Voyager are pretty much all just wishing they could afford it (and the Oracle licenses).

Wow. This is just so wrong that I don't know where to begin. First, Voyager is far from the market leader (in either usable interfaces or in market share). See Second, the underlying database doesn't mean a thing if you aren't given the APIs to actually modify or extend your primary application, unless you're willing to reimplement the entire application -- in which case, why bother paying for a library system in the first place. And in most cases, when the vendor has made an API available, you have to pay extra fee per potential developer to receive the documentation and to be eligible for paid support for their API (which, of course, is an additional support fee over and above your standard support fees). Third, most librarians I know couldn't care less about what technology their system is built on. They're focused on providing the best possible service to their users. Over the past few years, the library community has started to realize that there are some pretty cool Web interfaces out there in the wild that their vendors aren't providing for us. So we've been going through exercises like NCSU's use of Endeca [ncsu.edu] (on the proprietary side) and Koha [koha.org], Evergreen [open-ils.org], and WPopac [maisonbisson.com] (on the open-source side) to try and correct the situation. Librarians rock, you know.

A couple of answers from their FAQ

I thought that these were interesting items in their FAQ:

        6. What license is this software going to be released under?
        We are releasing this software under the GPL.

        8. What core technologies are you utilizing?

                * Database: Postgresql
                * Logic/glue languages: C and Perl
                * Webserver: Apache, mod_perl
                * Server operating system: Linux
                * Server hardware: x86-64
                * Messaging core: Jabber
                * Client side software: XUL

I was especially happily surprised to see jabber there. I have long thought that jabber is vastly underrated and under-used.

The entire FAQ is at:
    http://www.open-ils.org/faq.html [open-ils.org]

I'm impressed, but...

why do all the neat websites require JavaScript?

Re:I'm impressed, but...

Look at it this way; How many browsers out there don't support javascript?

Googlebot, for one.

How many people are using them?

Millions and millions. 8^)

There are extremely strong technical reasons not to rely on JavaScript to deliver content. This is just one of the most obvious.

By all means, go ahead and use JavaScript. Just don't rely on it, or you'll be sorry.

Nice!

I'm a college student and have been working part-time at a local library for the past few years to pay the bills.

Our library consortium uses something called Polaris, by Gaylord Information Systems. It's among the worst pieces of software I have ever had the opportunity to use, and it is completely proprietary and Windows based. It's a pain in the ass to get anything done, and is missing several key features (such as customizable reports) that would make our lives much easier. Coming from a company called "Gaylord" what can we expect, eh?

Hopefully Evergreen gains enough steam to get our consortium to at least consider it, however considering that most of the IT people employed by the consortium can't even figure out how to manage Windows servers it's likely they'll opt for something easer for them to administrate. :(

I'd like to see this in other industries, too

These seems to me to be the perfect way for Open Source to make rapid progress and gain further acceptance. By targetting key industries that are only served by expensive software packages that are poorly supported or require expensive support contracts, Open Source can provide a obvious and undeniable cost and quality improvement over closed source software. This is doubly so for industries where the needs are well understood. In addition to library management software, I would suggest that class scheduling and enrollment/registration software might be another area. Universities and schools pay millions for this software, and it's usually pretty primative stuff. Inventory management and cash register software might be another area.

This looks useful.

I'm a member of LASFS, [lasfs.info] this world's oldest SF club. We also have one of the three biggest publically available SF and Fantasy libraries on the West Coast. Our librarian has been looking for better software to help keep track of our collection, and I've just emailed him the link. Thanks, Slashdot for the info!

packaging?

Successful projects need to be well-packaged in order to succeed, particularly complicated ones like Evergreen.

I don't see any RPM or Debian packages. Do they exist? Is there a ready-to-install image?

Re:packaging?

Successful projects need to be well-packaged in order to succeed,

I think a project this size is going to need someone competent enough to untar a tarball to run things. Packaging isn't as big a deal for complex server software as it is for desktop or commodity server software.

A few items out there like this

Also check out Koha [koha.org], which is going to be launched at the Meadville Public Library in PA early next year, and has been in place in a few libraries throughout the world. It runs natively on Linux... I've gotten it to run on my home box (I am currently doing archives work for a local organization) and I think it holds its own against Horizon, III, Aleph and the big boys of integrated library systems.

I wanted to try out Open-ILS/Evergreen, but had some issues getting it to run. Granted, I didn't try as hard as I did with Koha.

In terms of Linux in libraries, there are a few devoted people (and the numbers are growing) pushing for it. I swear, it can not be beat in the public computing arena.

An open ILS just makes sense. It is easily customized, cheaper in the long run, and really, all the ILS software is served through web pages now anyway. Why are libraries spending up to $10,000 a seat for this stuff? It's the learning curve. And FUD.

Librarians have always understood technology

Libraries have had computerised inventory systems allowing people to check books in and out for an extremely long time. But they always use technology to fill a need. They don;t go overboard, and aren't fooled by hype from well dressed marketing people. They see technology as a tool and don't expect it to do more than it is designed to do. As a result, they tend to be pretty succesful.

Other government departments seem to do the exact opposite.

Perhaps we should get the nations librarians to run government IT departments.

I'm Pleased to See the Rollout Went Well

I've been following this and other OSS ILS projects like Koha on and off for a while. I was working at City College of San Francisco on the student ID barcode project. That was mostly being driven by the CCSF Library. They hated the long lines every semester when students lined up to get their barcodes manually affixed to their ID cards so they could use the PCs in the library to check email and the like. My boss and I developed a way for the SCT Banner system to produce barcodes directly on student IDs.

In the process, my boss and I were made aware that the Library was planning to dump their ancient Dynix ILS and switch to a new one. I tried making a case that they would be better off spending the $100,000 budgeted for the new system on developing an OSS one (paying me to do it, of course!) which would give them more control over the result. So I researched a lot of the OSS ILS projects going on. Evergreen seemed very promising.

The CCSF Library ended up going with a proprietary system - and guess what? They got screwed at least partially. The company promised to integrate the library checkout counter portion of the system with the SCT Banner student database that CCSF uses. This was a requirement and the library put it in the contract. And sure enough, as soon as the money changed hands, the company reneged on the requirement (because integrating anything with Banner is not a trivial task). Some personnel from the CCSF ITS department had to devote considerable time to providing a work-around.

So I'm glad Georgia managed to get Evergreen out and it seems to be working well, at least from the initial reports. They also managed to get it working fairly quickly as large OSS projects go. I think they were only at it for a couple years. And ILS's are not trivial projects. There are library industry technical standards that have to be adhered to and the end user usability issues are enormous. The acquisitions side tends to be complex (especially on the magazine subscription side), and the MARC record standard is not a simple thing to translate into a relational database schema.

Masters of Library Science/Information Science

Right now I am completing a Masters of Information Studies (AKA Library Science AKA Information Science). Let me just say that, while not everyone has a computer or Internet culture background here, we do discuss Free Software quite a bit. And not only in our computer classes, but also classes like "Information and its Social Contexts."

While we might not all be programmers, many of us are staunch defenders of open access to all information, including software. We might not seem like FOSS zealots, but we can be, and I think from a different place than strict computer nerds. Part of the reason why I like studying here is because, unlike many other university departments, we are cognisant and critical of the changes that are happening, for both good and bad.

25 years ago...

My wife (a retired library science professor) wanted to do this 25 years ago. No one was interested.

Of course

they were going to run everything on top of Ubuntu until it was discovered that a certain M. Shuttleworth did not return that copy of "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" back in '89. If only he'd of used that $20 million to pay that stupid book fine instead of a weeks vacation in space!

Any smaller scale solutions out there?

for quite some time, i've been looking for a open source or cheap low-end library management system for my church's small library. something that would let people create an account, log in and then check out books themselves. (there's no librarian sitting there) Then, send them email reminders when a book is due. Other cool things would be: browse the collection on the library computer or online; if a book is checked out, you can send a message to whoever has it; reserve books online; book data input from Amazon or other sources. The dream solution would be if people could enter their own book/video/etc. collections that they are willing to share and those become extensions of the library. If you want an item from a private collection, email them and see if they can loan it to you (with checkout and reminders registered in the library computer, of course). The systems for "real" libraries like Koha and evergreen are overkill for something like this. Anybody know of anything close to this or at least could provide the first level of functionality (without the cool features)?

Scalability

I'd love it if Cambridge Uni Library replaced their rubbish software with something like this, but can it scale to millions of books?

Amazing

This sounds like a really fantastic, useful adoption of Open Source. Has anything else this useful in the real world been done with Open Source apart from, say, Apache?

Evergreen

The software used at the library is Evergreen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_(software) [wikipedia.org]

MySQL batgirl password in source code

from /Evergreen-ILS-1.0.1/Evergreen/src/extras/import/d rain-batgirl-charge.pl:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use DBI;

my $dbh = DBI->connect('DBI:mysql:database=reports;host=batg irl.gsu.edu','miker','poopie');


They're also using PostgreSQL, as described in the FAQ, but the FAQ has no mention of MySQL. Someone should probably change the MySQL password on batgirl.gsu.edu, if they haven't already.

Upgrading from other systems?

Wow, just skimmed that site and played with the demo a bit and it looks pretty awesome. I used to do some tech work for a local library, and they used a management system from Follett, and had a massive upgrade from an older version to a newer version while I was there. Does Evergreen offer any sort of importing or upgrading from other management systems? This sound like it would be very beneficial to public libraries, especially if the regional co-ops/consortiums adopted it. But unless they can easily import their existing catalogs into the OSS software, they're probably not going to want to re-add and redo their existing setups altogether.

Very Impressed

I find it very encouraging that education and oss are working hand in hand, because they are both heading toward the same goal of information.

"Stake their future on OSS"? Really?

Uh, from reading the article, they built a software product on their own and decided to release it with a GPL license. Why does that mean they have staked their future on OSS? I havne't stake my future on OSS, but I have released code with a 'free to use however you want' license (really 'open' source) several times. A little bit of hyperbole perhaps?

Evergreen? Doesn't compute

In fact, I have it here on an FC6 system, and I've now installed about 10 more -dev packages, but still cannot make it compile. If anyone knows the correct syntax of what to launch to build it, and has a list of perl stuff it needs, I'd appreciate a hand.

--
Cheers, Gene

WAY too early to declare success

The hard part about running an ILS isn't getting it up and running, but maintaining it after technologies and patron needs have moved on. Evergreen is dependent on many different technologies. What if one of them quits being maintained? Even very popular technologies can be abandoned and there's no to predict what will still be used in 20 or more years.

Most of these ILS were state of the art at one time, but decisions made many years ago have limited what they can do now. Don't get me wrong. I am fascinated by Evergreen and may even contribute to it sometime. I think it's a great idea, and think they have made some innovative design choices (many of which are not discussed in the article)

But we need to honest about what's going on here. A handful of clever people have got a very basic system up. It has no acquisitions or serials modules -- i.e. the harder part to write which isn't visible to the public but which is critical for wide scale implementation. The project must move forward very carefully, or someone will wind up reverse engineering all this stuff later.

If you run a library, you have to KNOW you'll be able to run the system because your entire operation and years worth of data depend on it. Turnkey systems may have all kinds of problems and be expensive, but the problems can be solved with money. There may be librarians with very strong IT skills, but there are few enough of them that you can't count on being able to hire at least one of them.

online libraries are satanic

The idea that anyone can access the intellectual property of others without paying is just wrong. Librarians are pirates and thieves trying to rob poor starving artists and the hardworking publishing houses, recording companies, and movie studios. Libraries stop people from creating works of art by making them poor.

Who in their right mind is going to write a book knowing it might end up in a library?

Linux In Libraries

I have been trying to get my "Linux In Libraries" project going for quite some time. I would love to see a truly open library from the public internet computers to the circulation system. I meet with resistance but I keep on keeping on.

Right now I only have Firefox and Open Office on our public access Windows XP machines. I am in the process of installing Ubuntu Edgy onto a couple space computers. As the XP machines need to be serviced, I will be putting those spare machines out for them to use. :)

Isn't this like Star Trek?

Star Trek: "The Motion Picture" that is (as the rest were obviously slide shows of still images ?). Anyway - what I was thinking of was all of that immense alien tech wrapped around the original, and (in the movie) irrelevant idea that was Voyager 6. It seems the librarians have created a technological monster, that can sort, index, virtualise and publish on the whim of the user, but then there's a bit of an anticlimax as the end result is: you get the book you were looking for. I mean - why didn't it just deliver the full text as well? Can I see this Evergreen online? What will happen when I click on the book I want? Will it just tell me what shelf it's on and give the address of the library? A bit like those "DVD's in the post" web sites - I always felt they missed the point of the on-line, on-demand world - you select a movie, pop-corn in hand, and it informs you it will be in the post in 2 days?!? The chances I'll still want to watch it in 2 days is remote to say the least.

I mean:-

"The Shelf Browser shows items ordered along a virtual shelf built out of the holdings of the entire system. Patrons can create bookbags, which are lists that contain a selected collection of annotated titles. Bookbags can be kept private or shared as a regular Web page or as Atom or RSS feeds.' "

Now if they would just OCR all the books, they could dispense with the actual "library" part - and save a chunk of cash on premises, and all that fire insurance! (plus we could search the text a hell of a lot faster :P )

Disclaimer: I realise there are advantages to hard copy over reading off of a screen, and not just subjective ones either. This post is provided for your amusement only and should not be used to form part of any government decision making process.

Cheers (and a Merry Christmas)
Scoot.

Re:One washed out has-been helps another...

The future of libraries (brick and mortal at least) is about as bright as most open source software.

Well, both look better than the future of your slashdot trolling career if that's the best you can do.

Seeing its almost impossible for online libraries to legally lend ebooks, I don't see brick & mortar libraries going anywhere anytime soon. As GPL (and other Open Source) software is vital to almost all aspects of the software industry, OSS isn't going anywhere either.

Re:One washed out has-been helps another...

:) Nice assumption, but completely false considering I have and do contribute regularlly to OSS development. In fact, I've founded some fairly popular projects in my time as well. I just have my eyes wide open. Very few 'good' developers are willing to sacrifice their free time for the good will of mankind. When you're a teenager or even in your earlier twenties, all you want is to feed your ego. Later on you're more concerned with feeding yourself.

Re:Postgresql as the database

In the point 2 they mention: The practical benefits are extraordinary. In successful cases like Linux and Apache, the number of people who help out (whether they write code, or documentation, or test the system, or merely offer suggestions) can outnumber by far the manpower a conventional software house can muster. Open source tools and components such as the GNU C Compiler and the MySQL database have also benefited from a "thousand eyes," and these projects are in turn used as infrastructure for creating yet more free software. but in point 8 it is postgresql: 8. What core technologies are you utilizing? Database: Postgresql The question is: Which one do they really use PostgreSQL or MySQL? I believe they USE PostgreSQL because in installation docuemtation postgresql is mentioned: http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=installin g_postgresql [open-ils.org] quoting you If they had chosen MySQL, I'd be very worried and concerned as to whether it was a wise choice. They hopefully did not. And made a wise decision.

Re:Postgresql as the database

For the eighty billionth time, MySQL runs and will continue to run fine on every distro, you just can't buy enterprise support from MySQL AB unless you are using Red Hat or SuSE .

Re:I don't think this will help much

But you're in the wrong domain. Fair elections will never happen as long as there are computers involved: the only way to run an election fairly is by using hand-counted, paper ballots.

An election is only fair if it can be shown beyond reasonable doubt to every participant that it is fair. In other words, there is a requirement for universal demonstrability of fairness. Since nobody can say whether or not something is fair unless they first understand it, there is also a requirement for universal comprehensibility. {My personal definition would be "nothing beyond the understanding of a school leaver with passing grades in all subjects", but that is a starting point for negotiation.} That pretty much rules out most electronic systems, and certainly any general-purpose device which can do more than one thing. You might get away with an electromechanical or pure-mechanical machine, if it can be made available for public scrutiny whenever not being used for elections.

However, the level of human scrutiny required is no less even for a well-designed machine-based system than for simple pencil/paper/drop-in-the-box/hand-count elections. In fact, most of the security of any electoral system relies ultimately on the diligence of scrutineers, whose task becomes simpler with decreasing sophistication of the election paraphernalia.