On 29/01/2008, Deb Bergeron <bergeron_at_macalester.edu> wrote:
> Currently, looking at either Evergreen or Koha ILS systems, both are
> being used primarily by public libraries or small academic libraries.
> In neither case have I seen a consortial academic environment using
> either system--please let me know if I'm in error here.
No, not currently. But a consortial academic deployment of Evergreen
is planned (that's McMaster University, University of Windsor, and
Laurentian University at the core) and we're therefore working on
implementing those features that we need as academic libraries. I
apologize for not making that clearer in my initial response.
And there was an announcement earlier this month that the WALDO
consortium of academic libraries had chosen to fund the development of
Koha to meet their requirements.
So while there may not be a large consortial implementation of an open
source library system in an academic context today, several are in
progress.
> There's nothing wrong in creating requirements that meet the needs of a
> large set of academic libraries; this does not require taking a
> 'waterfall' approach to software development, rather it can definitely
> take on the 'release fast and often' approach as Dan describes.
I certainly hope so! But to release something, you need some thing to
release, which pretty much requires that you either start a new
project or pick an existing one and start modifying it to make it do
your bidding.
However, note that John's stated goal was: "We are not focused on developing an
actual system at this stage, but rather blue-skying on the elements that
academic libraries need in such a system and creating a blueprint." If
that can happen in 1 - 3 months time, that could be helpful to the
current projects. Heck, if the timeline is short and tight enough, I
would even consider participating.
> We
> need a starting point and John is correct imo that we need to have an
> Open Source ILS that meets the needs of both academic and consortial
> environments. How else can we do that without creating some basic
> requirements?
Tell you what. To kick off a discussion, I'll post a set of basic
academic requirements (over and above what's already there) to
Evergreen's open-ils-general mailing list tonight. Anyone who wants to
jump in and add to that (or tell me I'm totally off-base, or refine
one or more pieces further, or whatever) is welcome to join in the
discussion at http://open-ils.org/listserv.php
(ah, and I should belatedly note that at this point I am stating
purely my own opinion here; I haven't asked for the opinion of the
Evergreen or Koha communities or of the rest of the participants in
the Laurentian / McMaster / Windsor project in writing these
responses)
--
Dan Scott
Laurentian University
Received on Tue Jan 29 2008 - 20:30:13 EST