On 29/01/2008, John Little <John.Little_at_duke.edu> wrote:
> Hi Dan:
>
> I'm not sure I see this as a waterfall approach.
Waterfall development begins by building detailed specifications. The
terms "blueprint" and "design requirements document" in your initial
email acted as red flags to me. Several agile development approaches
strongly reinforce the principle that the goal is to build a solution
to a problem, not a set of documents. Some approaches, for example,
encourage minimal documentation by constraining feature descriptions
to what fits on a 3x5 card. Others encourage the development of
personas and scenarios to help illustrate the problems for developers.
Perhaps you had something in mind like the design documentation that
agile development approaches recommend; if so, I apologize for
misunderstanding.
> But in any case, I see no
> reason why existing implementers cannot use the fruit: some design documents
> from a defined community.
I'm sure they could be useful reference points. Do you have a time
line for this effort yet?
> It's also important to recognize, as I think you
> do, that collections have changed considerably over the past 10-20 years yet
> the workflow/services of the library system have not kept pace to help
> process/present a modern "collection". In other words, even in light of the
> very capable existing OSS systems, there is room for innovation. I think
> there are services that have not yet been built in existing open source
> systems. At the same time academic libraries need to try and articulate
> [common] needs.
Of course! This is why we have actively engaged in trying to start
building solutions to those needs, as best we understand them, with
Evergreen. But why not discuss those needs and ideas for innovation in
the existing venues (*4lib mailing lists, LIS wiki, the existing open
source library system mailing lists)? We would be _delighted_ if other
academic institutions would join us in discussing their needs and
ideas on how solutions to their problems could be achieved on the
open-ils-general mailing list (at http://open-ils.org/listserv.php).
Or helping build solutions, for that matter.
I, and others from the Evergreen community, have asked for input on
acquisitions and serials, for example (on the Evergreen blog, most
recently in http://open-ils.org/blog/?p=115, and before that in
September at http://open-ils.org/blog/?p=101, and at various other
times on the Evergreen mailing list). Unfortunately there hasn't been
a great deal of participation in those discussions. Please, if you're
interested in these problems, join in!
The value that you get from using an existing system as a starting
point is that it is concrete. One can quickly build a prototype
solution based on that existing system, put it in front of your users,
find out what works and what doesn't, and iterate. I suppose I have a
fear of a committee sitting around a table putting together a 30-page
document of requirements for a system that has, by definition, never
been through a single cycle of usability testing, and that the pieces
will be left to be put together by the people who try to implement
that design.
> Duke is very pleased with the initial expression of interest among the
> community of academic libraries. Optimistically I'd say we have some
> reasonable evidence that there is more than one approach to gathering the
> input and articulating the needs of the academic library community.
Naturally, there can be many approaches. I suppose my fear is that the
"let's write a design document" approach would siphon off input that
would have otherwise gone into the existing communities. Perhaps that
fear is unfounded. I hope that the discussions will be open and
distributed on a timely basis so that ideas can circulate without
having to wait for the final document. And I hope that those who are
really interested in seeing progress will join directly in discussions
with Evergreen / Koha / NewGenLib / other open source library system
communities.
> We hope
> to build on that expression of interest and we think we can do this without
> unnecessary duplication vis-a-vis existing OSS systems. That said, I think
> down the road, much of this work can lead toward some very helpful
> convergence and joint future activities as well.
As I said in my initial email, I do hope that if there is a follow-up
activity to the design document, that it results in extending an
existing system rather than building a new one from the ground up.
I apologize if I over-reacted in my initial response.
--
Dan Scott
Laurentian University
Received on Tue Jan 29 2008 - 19:48:41 EST