get out of the frying pan
DESCRIPTION
Slides that accompanied a lively, hands-on session by Lori Ayre and Cheryl Gould at Evergreen International Conference 2009.TRANSCRIPT
Get Out of the Frying Pan!
Lori Bowen [email protected]
Cheryl [email protected]
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