Koha – Free Software & Community @ Access 2011

Chris Cormack from Catalyst IT is one of the founders of Koha, an open source ILS, and one of the lead developers. He gave a talk on Koha today, but focused more on the free software, caring, sharing, and community.

Free Software

  • freed to run the program, for any purpose
  • freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (access to the source code is a precondition to this)
  • freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour
  • freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others

Why Free Software?

  • end goal is freedom
  • open source puts the emphasis on the development model
  • free software puts the emphasis on freedom
  • free software allows to weed, expand collection, and share

Koha

  • pile of code and documentation
  • more importantly, Koha is a community
  • widespread, fairly sized community with159 committers from every continent except Antartica
  • 35% women, partly because librarianship dominated by women, partly because of how it developed
  • 11+ years of development and an average 3.7 commits/day

Background

  • New Zealand libraries had a suboptimum ILS, and was not legally allowed to fix it
  • wrote RPS and got responses, but none worked for their requirements
  • some requirements were unique to New Zeland e.g. had to work on phone lines because of electric fences
  • decided to develop their own

If you would like to know more, there is a code4lib article on its forming.

What to do when things go wrong

Chris Cormack also gets extra thumbs up for encouraging library students to report bugs as part of their assignment by giving us chocolate! I will have to post our Koha vs. Evergreen Circulation Module Evaluation later.

Big Data (in Libraries) @ Access 2011

MJ Suhonos and Peter Van Garderen from Artefactual Systems did a talk on big data in libraries. In particular, I was interested in some of the points MJ talked about on big data. Here are my notes:

  • relative: 1980: 2.5GB = big data
  • definition: datasets that grow so large, become difficult to work with
  • big data is… big, and complicated
  • maybe we’ve simply been putting a square big in a round hole
  • don’t believe the cloud hype
  • big data is less about size, and more about freedom
  • open source tools + distributed design = new opportunities

Augmented Library – Access 2011 Hackfest

So today at Access 2011, it’s hackfest, with ~60-70 people, quite big!

I decided to work on the augmented library topic with 5 others. We discussed two different software products out there at the moment and possible implimentations.

Layar

Layar allows for mobile app development using GPS/Geolocation to provide more information and image recognition to make things/the environment more interactive. Layar is available on the Apple app store and Android.

Advantages: Drupal module, centralized database to search for all layars

Disadvantage: not available on iPod Touch (presumably not on iPad either).

Argon

Developed by Georgia Tech, Argon allows mobile app development using KML for more information based on GPS/Geolocation.

Advantages

  • open source
  • works on iPod Touch

Disadvantages

  • in development (can be buggy)
  • non-centralized (need exact link)
  • only available on iOS products (Android in development, but no timeline)

Possible Implementations

  • shelf/branch location of item
  • scan book covers to bring up book info, reviews/ratings, etc. – would work better in public library setting
  • polls
  • locate subject area, maps displaying subject areas
  • reference/info desk locator
  • interactive pop up e.g. what user wants to do, scan room number for booking system

Demos

Some Thoughts

I think the ideal would really be to create a mobile app that helps the user do just about everything. Wayfinding, searching, find general information (such as hours), find item information (including reviews/ratings), find availability to computers, etc.

What was interesting about the discussions we had was talking about how best might it be implemented with the technology that we have today. Apparently, the University of Illinois developed an app that tells users where to find an item on the shelf using signal strength positioning, but we could imagine it going very wrong especially around a lot of metal shelving. Would it be better to not have it at all than to direct a user to the wrong place? I imagine many would say yes.

Obviously, there are pros and cons to every method, but I think I concluded that if you were to develop a mobile app with the technology we currently have without spending an enormous amount of time on it, the app would work better with image recognition (something a la layar vision or QR codes) combined with input from the user.

For example, if a user wanted to find books on a particular subject, an app would ask what subject the user would like to find, then use GPS to direct them to the branch (for multi-branch campuses) if applicable, then once in the branch, it would pop up a mini-map for the user directing them to that particular subject on the shelf. If at any time they get lost, they just need to scan the appropriate image and the app could come up with a new mini-map providing a path from their current position to the shelf with the subject they’re looking for.

The advantages of a dynamic path map versus real-time positioning is that positioning technology is still not very accurate, and most users will not give apps more than one or two chances before deciding whether it’s useful or not.

Hopefully we can get the layar one public and then rather than simply showing a short video, we can have people try the app themselves.

Link: Googledoc Notes, screenshots, and code

Library Job Postings Sites

Was going to post this sooner, but been sick. As I begin to look for jobs, I have amalgamated a fair list of RSS feeds that I thought would be useful for. This will be copied over to the Resources page.

Lower Mainland

Canada

United States

If there are any more, I would love to hear about them!

On a side note: I updated my links list as well to blogs that update more often and that might be more relevant to LibTech topics.