John Miedema

Birth of the Reader-Hacker, Pt 6.

This is a just a ‘placeholder’ post because there is no way I can do justice here to two bright, substantial, best-of-breed, reader-hacker ideas, both emerging from the library field — one, the open source Integrated Library System (ILS); two, Open Access. Both ideas are important innovations for readers, and like I said, I am just going to brush over them for now.

An integrated library system (ILS) is a software package for managing all major library information functions, including acquisitions, cataloguing, circulation, serials, and most visibly, the online public access catalogue (OPAC) that library patrons use to find items. Reader access to books vitally depends on the ILS. For decades now, libraries have been paying big fees for vendor ILS software, often with limited functionality. Librarians have a ton of ideas about how to improve the ILS, but have been unable to eke out significant improvements without paying big money. Year by year, librarians have been learning how to build software themselves. In 2005, the Georgia Public Library Service could not find a vendor to meet their user needs, and asked their developers to build what became the Evergreen open source ILS. The open source ILS is to vendor packages what Linux is to Windows. The idea is catching fire, and promises to be the new development model for library software. Brilliant.

Open Access has significant implications for readers interested in scholarly research. My understanding of it is basic, but I think I have the essentials. For years, academic libraries paid heavy fees to provide their patrons with access to journals. The kicker is that academic institutions generate this research, and academics do not get paid to produce the content. The internet has been changing that. Open access repositories and journals have been slowly growing as a way to provide free scholarly research to anyone. This means that any reader who wants to dig a little deeper into a subject will have access to scholarly journals. Another brilliant idea.

Evergreen Open Source Library System
SirsiDynix: Integrated Library System Platforms on Open Source

Open Access Basics, an introduction by Walt Crawford