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

Sat Nov 19 15:21:09 CET 2011

Marshall,

Ah, I think I may have misunderstood.  I was interested in keeping product
and vendor separate, which it looks like you've done (but with ergonomic
fix to assume the common 1-1 relationship at first selection).  The case of
having multiple vendors or multiple products would introduce a much larger
change in system complexity (going from 1 to n always does), and I can't
cite many examples where it'd be relevant.  There are cases were some of
our partners have contracted with others for developments, while we do the
primary support, but this is pretty rare for us, and I'm not sure if it'd
even be within the scope of what you're trying to track with this survey.

Thanks for clarifying.  I look forward to seeing the results of this year's
survey!

-Ian

2011/11/18 Breeding, Marshall <marshall.breeding at vanderbilt.edu>

> 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:****
>
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> 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> 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
> http://twitter.com/mbreeding
>
>
>
>
>
> ****
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MJ Ray [mailto:mjr at phonecoop.coop]
> Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 1:15 PM
> To: koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
> Cc: marshall.breeding at librarytechnology.org
> Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] ILS Perceptions survey (Marshall Breeding)
>
> "Marshall Breeding" <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, 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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> bugs : http://bugs.koha-community.org/****
>
>
>
>
> --
> Ian Walls
> Lead Development Specialist
> ByWater Solutions
> Phone # (888) 900-8944
> http://bywatersolutions.com
> ian.walls at bywatersolutions.com
> Twitter: @sekjal****
>
> _______________________________________________
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> bugs : http://bugs.koha-community.org/
>

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