[Koha-devel] ILS Perceptions survey (Marshall Breeding)

Fri Nov 18 23:06:57 CET 2011

Ian,

So here is the response I sent to MJ off-list:

“I don't have time to dig out an irc client, but I do regularly read the logs at http://stats.workbuffer.org/irclog/koha/

I didn't say that open source support is an edge case.  Of course it isn't, and I as much as anyone appreciate the enormous impact of open source in the library automation space.  What I said is that having multiple support contracts is rare.  If you could provide evidence to the contrary I would definitely be interested.”

This year’s survey does, in fact, track the support company separate from the support vendor:

[cid:image001.png at 01CCA60B.AE09CA30]

The initial value is supplied through a table look-up, but responders can adjust the venders if needed.

This approach accommodates for the common situation where many different firms provide support services for the same software.  What it doesn’t do is account for a given library working with multiple support vendors, which I believe is the rare case.

-marshall

From: koha-devel-bounces at lists.koha-community.org [mailto:koha-devel-bounces at lists.koha-community.org] On Behalf Of Ian Walls
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 3:10 PM
To: Marshall Breeding
Cc: koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] ILS Perceptions survey (Marshall Breeding)

Marshall,

It's not so much an 'edge-case' as a generalization.  Product and Company are two separate things to track with an N to M relationship.  Any given company can support multiple products (as has been true for many years) and a product can be supported by multiple companies (this tends to only be true of open source products, but not necessarily; a company could have a license with another to support their proprietary system).

I'd be happy to help make the necessary structural changes to the system to support this generalization; I know time is tight, and it's probably more important to me right now than you.  But given the trends in open source ILS systems (more people adopting, very few leaving), this is only going to become more and more common as time goes by.

Cheers,

-Ian
On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Marshall Breeding <marshall.breeding at librarytechnology.org<mailto:marshall.breeding at librarytechnology.org>> wrote:
MJ,

The survey needs to cover the automation scenarios in place in most
libraries.  Within any given niche, there may be some quirks, but almost all
ILS implementations contract for support only from a single organization.
In rare cases, there may be additional contracts to other vendors for
development tasks, but the question focuses on support. I don't want to
design the survey around edge cases that rarely occur.

In this year's survey, I've added an additional factor for libraries to
indicate whether they receive support directly from their "ILS vendor" or
through an intermediary such as through another library or consortium.  This
gives me a way to analyze the results in a way that accommodates the
situation in many consortia where the first-line support happens locally
with only unresolved issues being directed to the contracted support
organization.

Libraries responding to the survey can always provide additional information
in the comments field to explain any special circumstances, and often they
do.

I publish summaries of the survey responses in a way that protects the
confidentiality of the responders.  I do not plan to release the data beyond
that.  While it may be possible to scrub and normalize the data in a way
that it could be shared publicly, it would take more effort beyond what I
already put in to the survey.  You are the only one that I recall that has
asked for this in the five years that I have been running this survey.

Best regards,

-marshall

Marshall Breeding
Editor, Library Technology Guides
http://www.librarytechnology.org
marshall.breeding at librarytechnology.org<mailto:marshall.breeding at librarytechnology.org>
http://twitter.com/mbreeding

-----Original Message-----
From: MJ Ray [mailto:mjr at phonecoop.coop<mailto:mjr at phonecoop.coop>]
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 1:15 PM
To: koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org<mailto:koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org>
Cc: marshall.breeding at librarytechnology.org<mailto:marshall.breeding at librarytechnology.org>
Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] ILS Perceptions survey (Marshall Breeding)

"Marshall Breeding" <marshall.breeding at librarytechnology.org<mailto:marshall.breeding at librarytechnology.org>>
> I do hope that all libraries using Koha will respond to the survey.
> The survey forms are linked to each library's entry in the
> lib-web-cats directory, so you will need to submit an entry if your
> library is not already represented.  A large number of libraries using
> Koha are already represented, but I'm sure that there are many still
missing. See:

Hi Marshall.  Usual requests.  Please could you decouple the outdated
one-to-one relationship between LMSes and support companies?

And would you release (some subset of) the data as Open Access, Free and
Open Source Software in a nice ready-to-analyse format this year?

It would be great to see an Open survey which reflected the reality of the
new LMS support landscape.  Maybe one of the above in 2011, one in 2012?

Thanks,
--
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop<http://www.software.coop>, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
Webmaster, Debian Developer, Past Koha RM, statistician, former lecturer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire for various work through http://www.software.coop/

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--
Ian Walls
Lead Development Specialist
ByWater Solutions
Phone # (888) 900-8944
http://bywatersolutions.com
ian.walls at bywatersolutions.com<mailto:ian.walls at bywatersolutions.com>
Twitter: @sekjal
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