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Connie Crosby did over at http://conniecrosby.blogspot.com/2008/03/movers-and-shakers-2008-announced-in.html

[...] Comment on know any Movers & Shakers? by amy [...]

[...] Comment on know any Movers & Shakers? by amy [...]

i don’t get why each library seems to think it needs a cutesy name for its opac. can’t they just be named the [your library name here] online catalog? every time i visit another library’s website, i have to think, “ok, keep your eyes peeled for what these guys have named their opac.” GACK! maybe early on, to encourage use, it helped to make the user feel as if the opac was another (human) member of the library’s staff [speculating! this is totally a theory! no source to cite!]; but in our world of the web heterogeneity is not always advantageous.

ironic that we have no controlled vocabulary to facilitate our finding each others opacs ~

Here’s a story about how one library accidentally gave their OPAC a personal name:

In 1999 I was working at a community college library, and we were about to go live with our first ILS. Judie, a staff member who had been with the library since it had opened, had retired the day before the server was to be installed. I had been promoted to her position, and so found myself, freshly promoted, standing in the server room with a half-dozen people watching the Sun technician set everything up.

The Sun tech announced that he would need a name for the server. “Library” was the first one suggested. I recall that I suggested “Herman”, after George Harrison’s favorite drink. Someone else suggested “Judie”. We all thought it was fitting.

Of course, we later found out that the name became part of the address of the server (http://judie.foo.bar) and that we couldn’t change it without a great deal of messiness. I felt we should go with the situation and and personalize the OPAC, but it didn’t happen.

Five years later we bought a new server, changed the name to “Library” (and changed all our bookmarks, handouts, etc.) and went forth with a good, solid, generic name for the server.

The best memory, for me, was that the real Judie wouldn’t believe me (or anyone else) about the server being named after her. I think it was several months before she finally accepted that we weren’t pulling some practical joke on her…

[…] at AskMetaFilter has inquired about why so many library OPACs have human names, and Jessamyn has asked for comments, so here is what I posted as a […]

I actually agree with Mary. I lived in Maine when the state-wide library system held a naming contest for the online resources they provide. Instead of going with something obvious and intuitive, that you wouldn’t need to be a librarian to figure out what it means (like “online resources”), they went the clever route and came up with the name MARVEL, for Maine Virtual Library or something. Not that I’m against being clever and creative, but the library profession has far too much jargon acting as a barrier to entry to uninitiated patrons. And this might be my only bad memory of Maine.

On a related note, if CatNYP is pronounced catnip, how should one pronounce NYPL?

It practice isn’t limited to libraries, I remember that when the first ATM machine came to our town it was called “Super Susie” and had a little cartoon of a bank teller on it.

Don’t we always give inanimate objects names to personalize them? Like buildings from the turn of the century that have the builder’s name or a woman’s name on them. How many people name their cars? Mary’s right, it makes them seem friendlier.

Simon — As a former NYPL employee, we pronounced it among ourselves as you might imagine we would have. Also, the main research library was “The Big NYPL”, the ancient bound catatlogs were “the old NYPLs”, etc.

Not interested in paying $5 just to leave this comment on MeFi, so here it is: My undergraduate library named the catalog after the first librarian at the university. We had a contest to suggest names, and that was the one selected by the librarians.

Personalizing technology with human touches like names, voices, and anthropomorphic interfaces is supposed to help us overcome our fear of new tech, become familiarized with it and use it more often. Of course, it is possible to go too far. But I think cute names, while perhaps cloying, are appreciated by students and community users. It’s a lot easier to refer to MORRIS or HOLLIS than, “Hey, you know how to use the OPAC?” So long as users find it accessible, I don’t have a problem with it.

Don’t know any, but lots of police departments have public outreach departments. They’ll often hook up writers and detectives, set up ride-alongs, and such. Worth a shot, anyway.

(Maybe I shouldn’t say “shot” when talking about cops…)

I hope this is work related.

What El said — I’d definitely call their PR rep and ask. Most likely, they have a policy where anyone you found is supposed to run it by that person before they talk to someone for research purposes anyway.

My brother-in-law is a beat cop in NYC, not in missing persons or homicides, but he might be useful…

does it have to be NYPD? because i bet if you asked really nicely, meg cabot would lend you Officer Friendly for a while.

(have capped NYPD and Officer Friendly for respect and stuffs, but after this post, i am back to no big letters again!)

Jessamyn, I’d suggest bugging one of my fellow geeks involved with code4lib. Either send out a message to the list, pop into the IRC channel, or just ask around. I know there were some folks looking to fly into Seatac and then get to Victoria from there. Also, I know there’s a bus that runs from the airport to the Port Angeles ferry terminal, from which the ferry to Victoria runs.

Jessamyn doubt my times will be of help. I am driving over from Vancouver on the Monday (8th) for Thanksgiving with the in-laws and staying the entire week. I plan on driving back from Victoria to Vancouver sometime on the Saturday (13th), though I might come back late on the Friday, if you plan to stay that long.

You have probably checked into it, but if you fly in/out of Seattle there is the Clipper service to Victoria, a high speed passenger ferry, though only 1 trip each way at that time of year.Clipper.

When you get your times set, we have to see if we can set up a MeFi meetup.

Jessamyn - if you are flying into Seattle, I suggest you look into the Victoria Clipper (http://www.clippervacations.com) ferry for transportation. Although aimed at tourists, it can be a good way for passengers without cars to get to Victoria from the U.S.

n.b. the Victoria Clipper is not connected to Sea-Tac airport, so you will also need to catch a Metro Transit bus or a taxi to make the connection. And while the bus is quite cheap ($2 or thereabouts), the Clipper will set you back roughly $100.

I’ll be in the same boat, so to speak.

Another option is if you find can a good price for a flight into Vancouver, you can get the Helijet from the Vancouver Airport to downtown Victoria. Not the best times (make sure you check Fall schedule) but damn fun, especially if you do the one that makes a stop in downtown Vancouver. The flight is about $140 Cdn, so not much more expensive than flying into SeaTac and taking the Clipper.
Helijet.com
Fall Sched.

Hi Jessamyn - I won’t be going to Access but make this trip often as my parents live north of Victoria. We have found that sometimes its cheapest to fly into Vancouver, BC. You can get a bus at Vancouver airport that takes you right to downtown Victoria via the ferry. Buses run regularly (every couple of hours) and cost about $25 CDN. As a bonus you get the beautiful scenery from the ferry.

The Victoria Clipper from Seattle is not cheap and is time consuming but the ride is beautiful. You might also try the seaplane from Seattle to Victoria - again a beautiful ride and a lot of fun for about the same price as the regular plane fare. There is a shuttle that runs from the Seattle airport to the seaplane terminal.

Kathy Gould
Palos Verdes Library District

Hi Jessamyn,
I live in Nanaimo, up Island from Victoria. I am sure you have booked all your tickets by now, but you might want to check out Harbour Air to fly from Vancouver to Victoria fairly cheaply. I wish I were going to the ACCESS conference but am going to Monterey instead a few weeks later. Victoria is beautiful though, enjoy!

I might be going to this one… coolness.

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Hypocritical bans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_(law) of library enthusiasts are a good example of a bad example. Banning contributors to the exchanges of library related forums on the web, listserv email lists and such censors the exchange of ideas particularly controversial contributions and dissent. Moderating of the publib list at http://lists.webjunction.org/publib/ hamper the innovative ideas that raise the ire of other participants.

Libraries need more innovative people contributing their ideas and critique. The kind of professionalisation seen in the library fields have lead to suppression of good ideas that would improve our cities’ public libraries. The library schools’ curricula are mind numbing rather than good philosophical and theoretical examinations of the library fields. Library schools’ have failed to develop interdisciplinary curricula with the academics and professionals of other related fields, for example architecture and urban planning.

Jessamyn/

Thanks for Promoting The Survey!!!

Getting Lots of Visits …

/Gerry

Done!

Curtin University Library in Western Australia chose to implement an instant messaging service. Open-source software was used: ejabberd for the backend, jwchat as the web client and Miranda Instant Messenger as the gui interface.

Another new addition to the library’s resources was a customisable subject guide database based on Pirate Source software created by the Joyner Library at East Carolina University.
Podcasts and blogs have also been offered by Curtin. Audacity – open-source, sound-editing software, and copyright-free music from ccMixter, to produce podcasts on a range of topics aimed at new students, open-source blog engine b2evolution for blogs for external and internal use.

Also been tinkering with MediaWiki as another useful open-source tool for library staff and clients.

All have worked out pretty well. There is a paper on our experiences available at

http://www.information-online.com.au/docs/Presentations/grey-smith.pdf

Always happy to chat about using open source!

I’m so glad to hear that libraries are using Ubuntu!

I can’t attest to anything open source my library is using, unfortunately. Maybe someday when I have some say in what is used.

Don’t forget LAMP, which my library is using on its website & catalog (P in this case is PHP, not Perl).

We’re a school and not a library, but we try to have software we think might be useful for libraries and librarians. Some of our graduates are using the open source tools. In addition to the things already mentioned, off the top of my head I can think of a few open source programs we have on the desktop-
Gimp (image)
Dia (for diagrams)
R (for statistics)
Cygwin (for GNU programs on Windows)
GAIM (instant messaging)
Thunderbird (email)

Our small public library, the Portneuf District Library, Chubbuck, Idaho, currently uses Ubuntu as its operating system for most of its public terminals. Windows is only installed on one machine. We also use OpenOffice and Firefox.

So far, they’re working fine. We’ve only had a few conversion problems on documents that were originally written in WordPerfect in the two years we’ve been using OpenSource products.

The biggest problem we’ve run into so far is our unfamiliarity and our patrons’ unfamiliarity with Linux-based operating systems. A lot of the online help available–especially for Linux–is extremely technical.

Sorry for going on so long. E-mail me if you want to know more about how we’re implementing OS at our library.

Wow, I had a similar idea for a presentation I’d like to do. And I’ve been thinking lately (as a big Ubuntu fan) of how to set up library computers (especially the public ones) running on Ubuntu instead of Windows.

Curtin University Library in Western Australia chose to implement an instant messaging service. Open-source software was used: ejabberd for the backend, jwchat as the web client and Miranda Instant Messenger as the gui interface.

Another new addition to the library’s resources was a customisable subject guide database based on Pirate Source software created by the Joyner Library at East Carolina University.
Podcasts and blogs have also been offered by Curtin. Audacity – open-source, sound-editing software, and copyright-free music from ccMixter, to produce podcasts on a range of topics aimed at new students, open-source blog engine b2evolution for blogs for external and internal use.

Also been tinkering with MediaWiki as another useful open-source tool for library staff and clients.

All have worked out pretty well. There is a paper on our experiences available at

http://www.information-online.com.au/docs/Presentations/grey-smith.pdf

Always happy to chat about using open source!

I’m so glad to hear that libraries are using Ubuntu!

I can’t attest to anything open source my library is using, unfortunately. Maybe someday when I have some say in what is used.

Don’t forget LAMP, which my library is using on its website & catalog (P in this case is PHP, not Perl).

We’re a school and not a library, but we try to have software we think might be useful for libraries and librarians. Some of our graduates are using the open source tools. In addition to the things already mentioned, off the top of my head I can think of a few open source programs we have on the desktop-
Gimp (image)
Dia (for diagrams)
R (for statistics)
Cygwin (for GNU programs on Windows)
GAIM (instant messaging)
Thunderbird (email)

Rural public library in Wisconsin–we use Firefox browsers on all public and staff computers except one (a staff hold-out that I can’t convince to switch). And OpenOffice on everything. I am budgeting for linux-based internet computers, to replace our ailing windows pcs at the public access stations. I’d love to learn more about using open source products–including any kind of online tools or anything that can interface with our catalog.

Rural public library in Wisconsin–we use Firefox browsers on all public and staff computers except one (a staff hold-out that I can’t convince to switch). And OpenOffice on everything. I am budgeting for linux-based internet computers, to replace our ailing windows pcs at the public access stations. I’d love to learn more about using open source products–including any kind of online tools or anything that can interface with our catalog.

Highline Community College Library (http://flightline.highline.edu/reference/) has added the LibX Firefox extension to our Reference Desk computers, thanks to our wonderful media serices staff. We’re still testing it out, so we haven’t added it to our public computers in our Info Commons, but for now it’s a nice way of quickly searching our catalog without having to open a new window and go to the library homepage. It also embeds our college logo as a cue into Amazon, Google, NY Times Book Review, and some more sites so that you can just click on our logo and instantly search the catalog. pretty cool. http://www.libx.org/

Just a couple off the top of my head that we use.

CUFTS for serials and GODOT for link resolving, both from reSearcher

Oops, the reSearcher link doesn’t seem to work
http://researcher.sfu.ca/

www.bigreadok.com

we are running this on Ubuntu LAMP — and using Joomla for the CMT. We are testing all of this for a redesign of our main library site. We are also going to start installing Open Office on our public machines. We also use GIMP on select staff member machines who want to do graphics editing. :-)

Highline Community College Library (http://flightline.highline.edu/reference/) has added the LibX Firefox extension to our Reference Desk computers, thanks to our wonderful media serices staff. We’re still testing it out, so we haven’t added it to our public computers in our Info Commons, but for now it’s a nice way of quickly searching our catalog without having to open a new window and go to the library homepage. It also embeds our college logo as a cue into Amazon, Google, NY Times Book Review, and some more sites so that you can just click on our logo and instantly search the catalog. pretty cool. http://www.libx.org/

Just a couple off the top of my head that we use.

CUFTS for serials and GODOT for link resolving, both from reSearcher

Oops, the reSearcher link doesn’t seem to work
http://researcher.sfu.ca/

www.bigreadok.com

we are running this on Ubuntu LAMP — and using Joomla for the CMT. We are testing all of this for a redesign of our main library site. We are also going to start installing Open Office on our public machines. We also use GIMP on select staff member machines who want to do graphics editing. :-)

I did a talk on OSS for Libraries at last year’s Computers in Libraries Conference. You can find it at http://www.infotoday.com/cil2006/presentations/B303_Horton.html for lots of examples of uses in libraries.

I did a talk on OSS for Libraries at last year’s Computers in Libraries Conference. You can find it at http://www.infotoday.com/cil2006/presentations/B303_Horton.html for lots of examples of uses in libraries.

Hello,

I think it is very important to provide as many tools as possible to the libraries.

My team and I built such a tool:

http://www.library-helper.com

to make search in local library easier.
It helps cross refernce Amazon best/top sellers and library catalog.

let us know what we can add/improve.

Thanks a lot.

Sam

[…] Jessamyn West is asking people how they’re using open source software in their libraries.  If you have anything add, head on over to her post and leave a comment. […]

[…] Examples of OSS in Libraries? Jessamyn West is asking people how they’re using open source software in their libraries. If you have anything add, head on over to her post and leave a comment. […]

Hello,

I think it is very important to provide as many tools as possible to the libraries.

My team and I built such a tool:

http://www.library-helper.com

to make search in local library easier.
It helps cross refernce Amazon best/top sellers and library catalog.

let us know what we can add/improve.

Thanks a lot.

Sam

[…] Jessamyn West is asking people how they’re using open source software in their libraries.  If you have anything add, head on over to her post and leave a comment. […]

[…] Examples of OSS in Libraries? Jessamyn West is asking people how they’re using open source software in their libraries. If you have anything add, head on over to her post and leave a comment. […]

Hi Jess! At Sarah Lawrence we use and recommend free software all the time. Here is a list of our recommendations. About half of those are installed in labs around campus (we have a big lab in the library). We’re still looking for a secure way to include apps that run under X windows on OS X — aside from that, no problems.

Hi Jess! At Sarah Lawrence we use and recommend free software all the time. Here is a list of our recommendations. About half of those are installed in labs around campus (we have a big lab in the library). We’re still looking for a secure way to include apps that run under X windows on OS X — aside from that, no problems.

At our library we use Mambo server, but are also investigating Drupal as an Intranet. We don’t use it here, but I think KOHA is an excellent open source ILS. It’s at www.koha.org.

At our library we use Mambo server, but are also investigating Drupal as an Intranet. We don’t use it here, but I think KOHA is an excellent open source ILS. It’s at www.koha.org.