On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Rhyno Art wrote:
Hi there, I'm the kaitiaki/manager of the Koha Project (www.koha.org). We just saw that NCState is phasing out of its leadership and support roles for Mylibrary. We're not sure what your status is in terms of what NCState provides, but we'd like to offer any help we could. The Koha participants come from a fairly similar background (a mixed business/nonprofit/govt/volunteer group) and also use Perl to write Open Source library related software. If we can be of any assistance in terms of your collective "next move", please don't hesitate to ask.
Hi Pat,
Our paths have crossed on the "usr-lib-info" site and I have corresponded with Steve Tonnesen about MARC in an RDBMS. I was intrigued by your offer on MyLibrary and wondered if there were any other systems that you would consider hosting.
Hosting is probably not the right word, I'd be happy (as would some others I've talked with) to help MyLibrary (or other groups) get themselves running on Sourceforge or Savanah, help them build community, and offer advice or help. It may even be that some Koha developers (or companies) may want to help in the development of MyLibrary to add more depth and breadth to their koha offering.
I am giving a session on a booking system called WIBS <http://wibs.sourceforge.net> on Friday at a preconference and have heard from numerous libraries that are interested in this type of application.
It sounds like this too may make an interesting adjunct to a Koha (or Avanti, or ...) system.
But I worry about the long-term care and feeding of this application, my employer is sympathetic to the value of OSS but we are pretty stretched to keep everything running and I have yearned for something like a "Red Hat" in the library world that is more focused on OSS.
I share your yearning, but I'd rather see another GNOME Foundation or Apache Foundation. If we could gather many small companies (like Katipo) who are interested in the library market, I think we'd be much healthier than having a single large company trying to drive the 'industry'.
I don't know what your relationship is to Katipo Communications and whether there is a view towards expanding its list of OSS options, but it strikes me that they have the integrity to become a type of "Red Hat" for libraries.
If someone is going to be the 'Red Hat', I think they'd do a good job. If there is going to be a coalition/foundation, I hope that they are a part of it.
So I basically have two questions:
1) Would WIBS be of any interest to you? I will help other libraries out to my dying day but it competes with many other priorities and I think a company with roots in OSS could do wonders with the system. Plus, my impression is that commercial options for internet station booking systems are quite expensive so there is probably room for consulting if that is the business model that any of your group desires/needs. I should mention that it is based on MRBS and, by extension, PHP, I don't know if non-Perl systems are problematic for you.
I think that there may be members of the Koha community who would be very interested in using/helping develop WIBS. Katipo may even be interested in working on it, though I am not a part of Katipo, and can't speak for them. As Koha rounds the corner on our current development efforts (1.2 and 1.4), it may make sense for us to look at developing a more turnkey library system with functions beyond OPAC, CIRC, and the like. At that poking at WIBS may make sense. As to the Perl v PHP thing, I don't know how other people feel about it. Personally, I'd rather we did all our work in Ruby ... but that's not going to happen any time soon.
2) I have done a lot of changes to the database structure for Pytheas and I don't know if it would be useful for you to take a look at the new schema. Pytheas is very java-centric, but the table mappings are completely generic. I think Steve looked at one of the original mappings and don't know how out of date it might be.
Steve, Paul, and Sergey may want to take a look at it. I know that they've done a lot of work on our schema, but there may be room for further optimization in either direction. I'll leave this to them.
I am leaving in the morning for Atlanta and won't be back online until Monday, but Koha is a great achievement and if there is anything I can do that would help it along I would be glad to contribute.
Enjoy ALA. I wish I were going to be there. We can certainly talk about contributing and/or cooperating/collaborating when you get back. -pate
Regards,
art --- Art Rhyno, Systems Librarian Leddy Library, University of Windsor Internet: arhyno@uwindsor.ca Tel: (519) 253-4232, EXT. 3163 FAX: (519) 973-7076 WWW: <http://www.uwindsor.ca/library/leddy/people/art>