ebyblog students and information

AADL Developer Blog

Its been radio silence here for awhile due to me switching jobs and getting up and running. I recently accepted the position of System Administrator at Ann Arbor District Library. It wasn’t an easy decision as I wasn’t actively looking for new employment, but sometimes you have to take opportunities when they come. I’m still [...]

The idea of sharing has triumphed.

Via What I Learned Today, I came across an older talk (but recently posted) by Eben Moglen called The Renaissance of Invention: Free Software and the Next American Century. I used to try to keep up on much of IT Conversations but have fallen quite behind with everything that’s going on. If you haven’t already [...]

The growing importance of Open *

While I still haven’t gotten time to fully grok dchud’s Open Data is not the point, some more posts regarding the importance of open data have come about. While I agree with dchud that it’s definitely not the whole story, it is an important one.

Alf over at Hublog posts some of the replies he’s gotten [...]

Code4Lib2007: Karen’s Keynote

I’m way behind in lots of things right now but I might as well post something. The keynote on the first day of Code4Lib 2007 was by Karen Schneider who writes at Free Range Librarian, among other places. You can view a video of her presentation on google and download links should be available soon [...]

Changing Vendors

Liblime acquired Katipo Communications’ Koha Division. The press release reads like PR but had a nice tidbit:

The acquisition also highlights one of the unique features of an open-source business and development model: “Katipo’s Koha customers don’t need to worry about switching to a new ILS,” explains Rachel Hamilton, Director of Katipo Communications. “With open source, [...]

Open Letter to ILS Vendors

From Roy Tennant:

So what should you do? I’m sorry, but you get paid a lot of money to figure that out, so you can hardly expect me to give it away for free. But it may be sufficient to say that you can’t simply provide incremental changes to your legacy code. You need to think [...]

High Costs for Libraries

From ecorrado:

I was at a meeting that was discussing ILS issues yesterday and someone from a small college said that their ILS costs them over 40% of the total library budget. She even clarified the total library budget part. I’m assuming she is not including staffing, but still, that is a big chunk of change.

I [...]

Open Source Costs and Commitments

There’s a nice interview over at Nelsonville Public Library about their move to Koha back in 2003. Here’s a quote I think is worth reading:

It’s important that libraries do not look on Open Source as free software that they just download, press a button, and all their problems will magically be solved. Open Source requires [...]