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I’ve been reading articles for the past few days talking about the ongoing debate between LibLime/PTFS and the Koha community working on a different version of the same software. Here is an article from Linux Weekly from last year describing the forking issue, the point at which LibLime/PTFS started independently developing their own version of the open source ILS Koha. Recently LibLime was granted the use of the trademark Koha in and around New Zealand according to their press release though it’s not entirely clear if a Maori word can even be trademarked. The Koha community centered around the original code at the Horowhenua Library Trust is concerned

I don’t get time to sit down and read blogs as much as I used to, but I still see them scooting through my feed reader, or in the profiles of people following me on Twitter, or sometimes just linked in random places. A few I’ve been enjoying lately.

• Lenny Likes Libraries – full of photos of books and shelves and library buildings. The Dead Libraries post is especially poignant.
• Libraries and Transliteracy – not that new, but consistently great with a stable of terrific writers. Learn about all kinds of literacies.
• Koha: One Library’s Experience is a great blog about the ins and outs of really getting started with Koha, by the Arcadia Public Library in California.
• Aaron Tay’s Musings About Librarianship has been a favorite for a while. I get great ideas from it but I haven’t just said “hey go read the whole thing.” Last weekend’s post about library social media campaigns that work is a great summary of some good news.
• Not a blog but a neat project, VLA is doing a 2012 Public Libraries calendar. One lovely library from every county (they hope), professionally designed and full of neat library facts.

People who follow my other online adventures may already know that I quit my library job, the automation project that I was so proud of. I didn’t really quit, I’ll still be helping, but I took myself off the project as “the person in charge of the project.”

It’s a not-entirely-long story but the upshot was that once we finished the obvious To Do list [getting books scanned and item and patron records into the catalog] the remainder of the work was muddy. The librarian and I had different opinions on what needed to happen next [in my mind: flip the switch and work out the bugs; in her mind: get the data clean and do staff training and write documentation and then flip the switch]. I realized that the quick and dirty automation project which I’d been doing for low pay, about 2-4 hours per week, that I was hoping to be finished with by early this year, was likely to go on sort of forever. I didn’t want a forever-job and couldn’t see a way to wrap it up with only my own toolkit.

I’m not entirely comfortable with the way everything worked out, unclearly and with an uncertain “what next” point. I’ve suggested someone who I think can pick up where I left off, but he’s not me and the library really seemed to like me. That said, after a lot of thinking on this, I realized that I was trying too hard to be the hero, the librarian that sweeps in and takes the tiny rural library and automates it in something akin to the rural electrification project. Cracking the whip, keeping the momentum up all the way to the end.

I really wanted to do this job, without thinking hard enough about whether the non-me aspects of this project were amenable to the task. As Alex Payne says in his “Don’t be a Hero” essay (about programming but it applies everywhere)

Heroes are damaging to a team because they become a crutch. As soon as you have someone who’s always willing to work at all hours, the motivation from the rest of the team to produce reliable, trouble-free software drops. The hero is a human patch. Sure, you might sit around talking about how reliability is a priority, but in the back of your mind you know that the hero will be there to fix what doesn’t work.

For whatever reason, I didn’t get the feeling that the library was learning to use the tools themselves, I got the feeling that they were getting used to me being available to solve problems and answer questions. I’m certain this problem is as much my responsibility, if not more, than theirs, but I’d gotten to a point where I literally could not see a way out of it. And I dreaded going to work. And I couldn’t see a solution.

The Koha consortium project in the state is doing well and I have no doubt the library will automate. The librarian wants it to happen, though her timeline is unclear. I vacillate back and forth between thinking that the work I did was uniquely valuable and integral to the library being able to automate at all, ever, and feeling like a bit of a quitter, leaving the project when it started to bog down and get tough. I’m lucky in that I have a lot of real-life and online friends who have been supportive of my decision, but it’s still one of the tougher ones I’ve made in the last few months. [rc3]

Nicole wonders aloud why people who paid for an Open Source OPAC from LibLime aren’t raising hell when they are instead pressured to accept the closer-source version instead?

So why are these librarians taking it? Why are they being quiet? I don’t have an answer for you – and so I’m hoping someone out there can answer this for me. If you signed a contract for one product and then are told you have to use another – do you just say okay? or do you move on or demand the product you originally wanted. I think that the result of the Queens Library law suit will be very interesting – but I’m shocked that this is the first!! Librarians have been just taking these hits and coming back for more.

“Meanwhile, if there is high ground to be had, I doubt it is currently occupied by LibLime.”

Roy Tennant explains what’s been going on at LibLime and links to a longer post at Library Matters. LibLime’s version of this announcement, on their news feed, is not very encouraging. As someone working with a tiny library and a free version of Koha, I’m particularly disappointed in the libraries that are helping bankroll this and are not pushing for more openness in terms of release dates for code and better communication all around. Meanwhile Nicole Engard whose work I respect a lot has taken a job at Bywater Solutions. They are lucky to have her.

I subscribe to the LibLime news blog which is often announcements of libraries that have decided to go with Koha. It’s an interesting blog, I’m always curious who decides to go to the Open Source route. This latest announcement about the Derby Public Library cheered me because not only are they going with Koha, they’re implementing YakPac which is a kid-specific OPAC that still has a huge degree of functionality. I show it off a lot in my 2.0 talks because it’s engaging and entertaining and represents the answer to the question “how far can you go with the OPAC?” without a lot of bells and whistles, just fun easy-to-use design.

I’ve been travelling and working more than I’ve been surfing and sharing lately. That will change this Summer, but for now it’s the reality of what seems to be The Conference Season. Here are some nifty links that people have sent me, and ones that I have noticed over the past few weeks. Sort of a random grab bag.

• Some introspection and questions from a special collections blogger. “Why do this anyways?” If you have suggestions or comments I’m sure she’d appreciate them.
• The MaintainIT project has a guest blogger from the Tonganoxie Public Library in rural Kansas. I’ve pointed to their website before as a way that a tiny library can make use of tech tools to really expand their presence and share a lot of information. Library director Sharon Moreland is detailing her library’s move from Sirsi to Koha and it makes for great reading.
• Speaking of library blogs, Seattle Public Library has one called Shelf Talk which falls solidly into the category of “blogs I’d read even if I weren’t reading blogs for work” Right up top there’s an interview with Cory Doctorow talking about his new book Little Brother. Also noted is every librarians favorite category: lists, booklists to be exact. The blog manages to intersperse library information, local lore and trivia and book topics in a lively and attractive package. It’s a great model of what a library blog can be. Yay team!
• Dear New York Public Library, please do not invade the Andrew Heiskell Library Braille Collection (the only browseable collection of books for the blind and visually impaired in NYC) by relocating the Technology Unit there. Thanks. More info on facebook.
• Original Spiderman origin artwork donated to Library of Congress.
• Not exactly library related, but this TED talk with James Howard Kunstler talking about the despair of suburbia and the importance of creating inspired public spaces as “manifestations of the common good” is worth watching. 20 minutes.

Five Days (miniseries). Joint production of HBO and the BBC. While not available on DVD (yet), it is still available on HBO on demand.

The Plot: A mother and her two children disappear in the middle of the day. A car abandoned for no reason, with bag and cell phone left behind. What happened? Where did they go? Is it a kidnapping, or did she run away?

The Good: Everything.

As I've said in the past, I love TV. And I love what a good miniseries can do. Five Days follows five different days in the investigation of the missing woman and her two small children; day 1, day 2, ending at day 79. I love that; not only does it require the viewer to "fill in" some of what has gone on in the jumps between days, it acknowledges that not everything is worthy of highlighting, of being shown to the viewer. It also reflects that an investigation may have lags and then flare up again.

The strength of a well done, well plotted mini series is that there is a clear story, defined story arc: beginning, middle, end; the pacing is constant; and it doesn't drag things out (to satisfy a need for a certain number of episodes) or speed things up (ooh, only a movie is acceptable, TV series are not!)

Five Days looks at everyone involved in the investigation; the husband, the parents of the missing woman, the police, reporters, even eyewitnesses. Somehow, it manages to show the perspective of each; we both sympathize with the main detective who just wants to get his job done, as well as get irritated at his poor handling of the media. We see the anguish of the husband, yet also doubt him. It's always someone close to the victims, isn't it?

This is as much about the people affected by the investigation as it is about the investigation itself; often, we get character sketches. While the crime itself is resolved, not everything is wrapped up and tidy at the end of the series.

The husband is played by David Oyelowo; he was Danny on MI-5 aka Spooks (another made of awesome BBC series.) David was brilliant in that, and he is equally fab here.

While made with HBO, this is set in Britain, using British actors. I like crime shows; and it's always interesting to watch how other countries investigate crime and how their legal system works. Here, there is the additional intrigue of race in the UK; the husband, Matt, is black; his wife is white; and, in terms of prejudices, the wife's ex-husband is French.

Um, no, I won't tell you what happens! Catch it on-demand while you can; add it to your Netflix Queue.