The origins of Open-ILS

From: Mark J. Andrews <markand_at_nyob>
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:30:27 -0500
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Brad,

Nice to meet you!  I've followed Open-ILS for a couple years now.  Can you
shed some light on your project, namely:

   * the problem(s) - without damning anyone or any company, what did and
does PINES want that commercial systems can't or won't deliver?

   * the ability of a given, usually commercial, product to solve those
problems - Where the problems financial (a vendor could do x, or so they
claimed, but they wanted a boat-load of money), architectural (the
commercial product's architecture couldn't support x, or couldn't be changed
to support x in a given time-frame, or for a given amount of money), lack of
interest ("Sorry, we aren't interested in x, go talk to somebody else"), or
something else?

   * changing user needs (and it probably doesn't matter why they change.
Changing markets?  Changing user preferences?  Changing technology?  All
three and more) - Now PINES is the vendor.  How does your design accomodate
changing user needs?

   * the ability of vendor(s) to respond to change - Again, how has PINES
organized itself to do this?

The PINES experience can be a help to everyone interested in NextGen
products.  We are all faced a similar problem set.

Mark Andrews, Systems Librarian
Creighton University, Omaha NE
mja30807_at_creighton.edu
mja30807_at_mac.com
Received on Sat Jun 10 2006 - 11:33:27 EDT