The cost effectiveness of Open Source for HLT

Horowhenua Library Trust recently underwent a review and one of the recommendations raised in the final report was to assess the cost effectiveness of Koha and Kete for Horowhenua Library Trust. The tables above tells the story really.

But you can view the whole slideshow below.

Introduction
coz it makes no sense without painting a picture first :)

In 1983 I was quoted $3,000 to have a wedding dress made by a bridal shop in Wellington – no way my Mum could afford that dress. We would have to make it
ourselves.

So we went into Fitzroy’s, an old fashioned draper's shop in Levin, and within minutes of hearing that I was marrying a local lad, “Nancy’s boy”, we were surrounded by a clutch of woman: comparing fabrics, discussing how to adapt the paper pattern, which lace, what size seed pearls etc … I’m sure you get the picture. That dress turned out heaps better than anything I was thinking of – and saved us a fortune too!

That was my first grownup experience of crowd-sourcing, group think, community consultation, collaborative design – call it what you will. What I learnt that day was the power of community ownership, adaptation and the sheer power of collaboration.These are key concepts in the open source world.

Cost effectiveness of Open Source development for Horowhenua Library Trust.

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"The Library is no place for children"

Followers of my Twitter stream yesterday will have seen my verbatim quote from an irate library patron:

"The library is no place for children - they should be out roaming the hills. If you keep encouraging them I'll stop coming".

How do you argue with that ... its like arguing whether the sky is blue or not. But as librarians we have to argue because the sad reality is that their truly are people out there who actually believe this.

The complaint was sparked by a change in layout made at her local library. The clients who use the library borrow insignificant amounts of library material, so low that we are seriously having to justify keeping the branch open, situated as it is in its prime Main Street position. Yet visitor counts are up - way up - we are busy, busy, busy. But we aren't converting visitor usage to issues. And maybe thats okay, maybe this community doesn't want to borrow library materials, maybe books just aren't important, maybe homelife is so muddled that library items just aren't safe taken home, maybe people are laughed at if they pull a book out at home. This community is statistically poorer, browner, younger, older and less educated than other communities in our District.

But we are not giving up this without a fight. We have completely turned the collection profile on its head, adjusted the focus on what resources and services are available and have sought help from a successful retailer in terms of marketing and presentation.

We think it is really important to encourage kids into the library and we will be shameless in employing whatever method we think will work.

And if we lose an old biddy in the process then so be it.

Kete : a job well done.

The Kete Vision
A couple of years ago a bunch of us dreamed of Kete, a digital archive of local arts, cultural and heritage material in a variety of media formats coupled with social media techniques to make it 'zing'.

Our ultimate goal was to get to a point where a user entering a search in Kete Horowhenua would be shown results from other neighbouring Kete who might hold Horowhenua material due to historical boundary changes, plus other databases including Koha the Horowhenua Library catalogue. We also dreamed of being able to draw search results from big national repositories of digital content like Te Papa, National Archives, National Library etc. regardless of what content management system they were using.

Digital NZ
Digital NZ is the National Library site which currently 'harvests' records from 67 contributing organisations throughout NZ. Here is a diagram showing how it works and here is a list of who the current contributors. Incidentally, Digital NZ also have a Kete for collecting content from organisations who don't have their own digital content management systems :)

Federated Searching
Late yesterday the final enhancements were turned on and all of this is now operational. An added bonus is that the new Koha will also pull results from Kete Horowhenua.

A few links to have a look:

• A search in Kete showing results from Digital NZ,
• a search in Kete drawing results from another Kete, our Library Trust as an organisation Kete which is distinct from the Horowhenua community one,
• and a search in our test Koha 3.0 site drawing results from Kete Horowhenua.

The HLT Kete is proving quite useful as a collaboration tool in the Library 2030 work we are working through.

Where to now
This is all very exciting looking ahead. Manawatu Horizons member Councils are working through a project to build a shared digital archive using Kete. This will then be searchable from other Kete thus opening access to the vast wealth of local authority archival material currently held by a bunch of neighbouring Councils.

Kapiti Coast are in the process of starting a Kete collecting the digital resources from all arts, cultural and heritage organisations from within its area, setting up a separate basket with its own theming for each main organisation thus enabling individual identity within a shared database.

Providing that the new Council cemetery records, At Home Care and Youth databases have all been built on open standards then these to will also be searchable through Kete.

I think we can call this a job well done!

Twitter Data Analysis: An Investor’s Perspective

This post is merely pointing you to the remarkable analysis of Twitter usage carried by Robert J Moore, CEO and co-founder of RJMetrics.

Just go read it ...

Boring is the new black.

The reading I have done recently on future forecasting and trends is boiling down to a few simple truths which can be summarised as: "Boring is the new black" (not mine I'm afraid - flicked past me on twitter this morning.)

1. As life becomes even more fast paced and frantic we are valuing the slow paced and calming.
2. We like to 'savour': lifestyle choices, quality social and recreational experiences.
3. Baby boomers will be slamming into retirement - and they won't be ready to put down their rucksacks and travel guides and recline into their lazyboys and largeprints. They are active and discerning and are looking for quality (and that doesn't mean excess) in the next ten years of their lives.

This post is a summary of the about the main themes from the Horowhenua Development Plan published in June 2008. It is actually really good reading!

Population
The population of Horowhenua has remained static for virtually 20 years, and is likely to remain so. It may even decline. The numbers of young people leaving the District is almost equally offset by the numbers of older people retiring to the area. We have about double the NZ average of retirees at 30%. This is set to rise to 34% by 2026 and around 50% by 2051. Council are committed to attracting a younger demographic to the District, people looking for an improved quality of life.

So what?
All retirees are not equal! Horowhenua is a destination for retiring baby boomers: 'young' retirees, active, highly mobile, relatively well off, discerning in their lifestyle choices and recreation choices. Over time they become 'old' retirees with a different set of characteristics: more dependent, less mobile, less 'able'. There will be an increasing workforce of caregivers who tend to be of a lower socio-economic demographic, and are often immigrants.

Development
Subdivision and building consents reveal that new development is up and trending towards rural-residential, lifestyle and coastal villages. There is noticeable trend for holiday or second homes in the District. We have a high proportion of single occupier dwellings. The lack of public transport is an issue for the District, especially but not exclusively for older people who are more restricted in their movements for reasons which include: financial, age related and philosophical reasons ie 'green' movement.

So what?
We will have the same number or less people spread over a larger areas in pockets of community. The goal is to develop 'liveable communities', neighbourhoods with 'hearts', focal point with all basic services to support lifestyle choices and an enhanced quality of life. New focal point for Levin is around the Mall carpark area, and "lack of social services restrict growth in coastal villages: schools, shops, libraries."

Concluding thoughts
So thinking now about this relation to the design of library services in Horowhenua over the next 20 years:

• we will have lots of young and old retirees,
• lots of service support workers and their families,
• we need to support Council in attracting a younger demographic to the District through providing a quality service; libraries are a key part of decision matrix in relocating and say a lot about the town,
• we be serving a disparate, dispersed community, clustered into 'village' service centres,
• our clients will be looking to savour 'quality' and libraries as 'experience' and being central to the heart of their communities. This is not the 'drive through' service model but a 'living room'.
  

Public Library Service in Horowhenua : now and in 2030

I have a small task to do .. nothing too challenging for a wet Thursday... I need to prepare 'something' to communicate to Council Officers what the library service delivered by Horowhenua Library Trust in 2030 might look like. Yes - I can hear you laughing - and now that I have stopped weeping, I am actually starting to feel excited by this.

The Background.
Very briefly: we have a new library building planned for Levin, we have been messed around for about 5 years, change of staff at Council, new chap thinks we have no vision, no plan, no idea what we want to achieve (obviously case studies, building briefs etc etc have been "lost" in the bowels of Council) . Moving along ...

The Good News
And this really is good news:

• Council are not disputing that we need a new building - they just want to know what we want to 'put' in it,
• Fundraising is going splendidly well - we have almost $2m already.

Refresh our Vision
We now have this golden opportunity:

• take back control of the project and drive it ourselves,
• think about changing societal trends in general and Levin in particular in 2030,
• refresh and define the role of HLT library service in the community both now and in 2030,
• consult with our community about what they want,
• recommunicate our vision.

I put out a wee cry for help on Twitter yesterday and the lovely Brenda Chawner and Alison Wallbutton sent me through some really useful links that I am including here for future reference.

Current Library Thinking

• Public Libraries of NZ : Strategic Framework (NZ, 2006).
• The Unison Report : taking stock of public libraries (UK, 2008)
• The Darien Summit : The Future of Libraries (2008) and The Darien Statements.
• The Future of Public Libraries.

The last link above is a visioning project currently being undertaken in Australia. While the report isn't out yet, but due any day, what I have found on the net so far is quite inspiring. The exercise is based around a scenario matrix, from which 4 possible scenarios are derived.



The good folk doing the work have shared their slides as well (I love librarians:)

Scenarios To Strategy

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Societal Trends

• 2009+ 10 trends,
• The Futurist

Local Context

• Horowhenua Development Plan: Executive summary and Levin
• Statistics NZ : Levin

What next
So the plan from here is to read through the future trends stuff about society in general, take a look at the Statistics NZ stuff for Levin demographics, then the Horowhenua Development Plan to see how Council see our local community developing over the next 20 years. We need then to think about that all in relation to the Future of Libraries scenarios, and from there come up with a vision of the role of the public library in Levin,now and moving forward, and the services we will be offering and the functions we will fulfil.

Easy!

Liblime forks Koha

Horowhenua Library Trust developed Koha, the world’s first open source library management system back in 2000. We gave it to the world in the spirit of community. We are very happy, delighted in fact, for any organisation or individual to take it, improve it and then give their improvements back.

Recipricocity is the keystone which gives strength to the Koha Community.

We do not begrudge vendors taking our gift and building a commercial enterprise out of it, as Liblime, Biblibre and any number of others have done, but the deal is that you give back. This has worked well for a decade and Liblime has been a strong, valued and much appreciated member of the Koha international community over that time.

So it is incredibly sad and disappointing that Liblime has decided to breach the spirit of the Koha project and offer a ‘Liblime clients only’ version of Koha. Let's call it what it is: vendor lockin and a fork.

Technically, because Liblime offers hosted Koha what it is doing does not breach the GNU GPL licence conditions of Koha. Liblime has said it will continue to push new developments – but its actions show it is not contributing code or participating in the community anymore. Other developers are sharing their public Git repositories but there is no sign of Liblime's yet. An important principle of FOSS is that you release early and often allowing the community to share in the development and benefit.

Long serving, reputable staff with a proven track record of commitment to open source have, I assume, chosen to not work in the new Liblime culture. They have moved to other vendors committed to the FOSS ethos - people like Nicole Engard who late last week accepted an employment offer from Bywater Solutions and Biblibre.

The other thing that us Kiwis don’t understand is how Liblime could have trademarked the word ‘Koha’. It’s a simple and common word in New Zealand; it would be like trademarking the word ‘thanks’ or ‘gift’ or ‘hello’ in America. Liblime has also registered a Koha Foundation which strikes at the very soul of the Koha community. Liblime has taken the name, the domain and the foundation away from us all. The company has said publicly that it is just holding them in safe keeping for the community and will hand them back to the Koha community.

The real loser in all this is the WALDO consortium who seem to be bearing much of the fallout for Liblime's divisive decision to fork the code. Much of the new development work that Liblime is going to be withholding from the community is being funded by WALDO - $USD600k worth:

* Acquisitions: Purchase Orders, Budget Hierarchies
* Serials: Serials Binding, Improved Prediction Patterns
* Cataloging: Holdings Structure (3-tiered), Authorities Control
* Circulation: Offline Circulation, Proxy Patrons
* System Administration: Granular Permissions, Enhanced Reporting

This could be a great contribution by WALDO to the Koha open source project, and a splendid reciprocal payment for being given Koha in the first place… except that Liblime is taking it, keeping it and robbing WALDO of the kudos and goodwill that they should be earning by sponsoring this development. Why WALDO are letting this happen is anyone’s guess but I sincerely hope that other Liblime clients don’t let this happen to them too.