Comments on: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0: Casey Bisson’s presentation at IUG 2006

By: » ego soars

» ego soars — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:01:22 +0000

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By: Janet

Janet — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 22:14:07 +0000

And then there’s the level of IT support available to a library, and how willing IT departments are to accommodate open source software. Not all libraries have the in-house technical resources to install, configure, and support open source software. Even if the library has the staff, many IT departments don’t allow library staff the level of access needed to do this work, don’t allow departmental servers, etc. IT staff from corporate backgrounds may not be familiar or comfortable with open source software, looking instead to expensive, proprietary solutions to problems. And even those of us who are enthusiastic about open source may think twice before trusting critical functions and data to systems with no vendor support. If our best in-house IT person moves on to greener pastures, it can be difficult to find someone who can get up to speed quickly on an unknown system.

By: Ranti Junus

Ranti Junus — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 22:57:21 +0000

I think it could be both. Many of the management people might not be aware of such open source stuff and prefer the “comfort” of dealing with vendors. Even if they are aware of the open source stuff, many of them usually need to be customized first to fit the library needs. Not many libraries have qualified staff to do the customization stuff. I dunno. BTW, Casey admitted that he actually used his own time to develop this WPopac.

By: Genny

Genny — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:23:59 +0000

So “we lack a critical mass of programmers who work with library systems and library data” … or do we? I keep hearing of people open sourcing their modules on Sourceforge. Isn’t it really more an issue of library management preferring to deal with well-known vendors who only work with library systems and library data?

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 22:08:11 +0000

Dy-No-Mite! Wish I could watch it.