Get Out of the Frying Pan!

Lori Bowen Ayrelori.ayre@galecia.com

Cheryl Gouldcheryl@fullyengagedlibraries.com

Evergreen Conference 2009Athens, Georgia

but don’t get into the fire…

It’s cool that Evergreen is free and that you can see the source code. But.

The best part is….

you

are

in

control

With an Open Source Library System…

You decide what gets built.

You decide how it works.

You decide how you work.

The All Powerful “Vendor”

Why it doesn’t work for us…

1. Each product limited to one support option

2. market too small

3. built on old, nasty code

4. development is years behind need

5. data locked up

6. inflexible – too few customization options

[more]...why it doesn’t work for us

7. RFP process doesn’t ensure libraries make the right choices

8. migration process is so horrific, there is no recourse once a move has been made

9. Standards issues

Learned Helplessness

Imagine if people working in libraries actually felt their ideas about how to do things made a difference?

Imagine eliminating “waste” (muda) of staff work effort

Muda (無駄 ) is a Japanese term for activity that is wasteful, doesn't add value or is unproductive.

Imagine being able to optimize the user experience

A Library Product:

Imagine being able to roll out a new service quickly!

Sweet! My book is ready!

“Text-a-Circ”

Now is the time to

take back the

POWER we have ceded to

the Vendors

Key to Firefox Success: Community Involement!

Mozilla

Lessons Learned

• Embrace the chaos and organize a chorus

• Listen to your community

• Lead your community

• Let your community play and experiment

37% of the code contributed to Firefox

since November ’06 has come from the community

Evergreen is a work

in progress.

We need to help build it.

Suggest improvements

Increase participation

Ways to contribute to Evergreen

Contribute new code

Co-Sponsor development

Developdocumentation

Organize Evergreen

communities

Do usability testing

Manage communities

of interest (e.g. customers,

catalogers, circ staff)

Identify inefficiencies

Conduct userneed

assessments

Optimizeworkflow

Troubleshootexisting code

Raise money

Beta Testnew

releasesDesign screens

Write specifications

Create and test third party

add-ins

Step One

Stop talking about what The Vendor can do and start talking about what

WE can do

More first steps…• Encourage every user to think critically about

how the software works – encourage them to imagine doing things differently

• Provide a mechanism for exploring alternative approaches (what if we tried…..)

• Capture good ideas and get them to your contributors and your developers

• Develop new resource-sharing relationships with other libraries (people are resources too!)

The Beginning