Dear Governor Brown,
Every other time we’ve faced budget shortfalls that result in service reductions, disenfranchised and poor people have always been able to count on libraries to access email, get on the Internet, and to find critical information. Your proposal to cut services AND close libraries hits people with the least the hardest. And it doesn’t save a cent.
“It’s altogether infuriating, a misguided and disgraceful attempt at salvaging dollars and cents. This city is not tossing away its appendix to save the whole system, instead, it’s puncturing a vital organ.”
Marshall Breeding announced the results of his 2010 ILS Survey and two of the big winners in this year’s report are Koha and Evergreen. And, interestingly, the big loser was none other than SirsiDynix. Just sayin.’
The RFID in Libaries Standard (ISO 28560) moved to Stage 50.20 today. In other words, the Standard is about two months away from being finalized.
Why do you care? Because this standard is going to be the basis for a U.S. Data Model standard. This is what we’ve been waiting for. Finally, a standard that defines how to organize information on a library RFID tag including recommendations for what data elements can be used and which ones are mandatory.
I’ve been remiss about posting to this blog because I have some blogging responsibilities elsewhere, namely os-ol.org and rscel.evergreen-ils.org.
Two online tidbits led me to check in with the folks at SirsiDynix about what they are telling their customers about the viability of moving to an open source ILS. Officially, SirsiDynix states that "we believe that competition is good...Two online tidbits led me to check in with the folks at SirsiDynix about what they are telling their customers about the viability of moving to an open source ILS. Officially, SirsiDynix states that "we believe that competition is good.
A new state-of-the-art resource sharing software has been in the works at Equinox (with sponsorship from ohioNET) for some time now. And while it isn't ready for download, it did cross a new threshold recently. As of August 2, 2010, FulfILLment was established as its own open source project (as opposed to a piece of Evergreen).
I was recently interviewed by David Carr, a freelancer who wrote an article for Baseline Magazine. I was pleased to see that the quote he included from our discussion was actually complete and in context. Seems so often you end up reading the words you said...but somehow the context gets twisty.
Anyway, I thought it was a good article.
I've been focused recently on developments in UHF technology and how it might help libraries improve on the RFID products we currently use (which are based on HF tags). My interest, of course, is having something that fits our library applications best and if UHF is a better fit, I'd rather know now than later after we have an even greater investment in the HF technology.
I'm heading off to Colorado today to talk with a library consortium about some of the exciting opportunities for expanding their services by taking advantage of open source technologies. What I'll be talking about is the openings created when a library migrates to an open source library system product like Koha or Evergreen.
Here's my starter list of the things library consortia can be (okay, I mean should be) doing: