2.0 Projects and Scalability another perspective
Jan 18th, 2007 by Karen
Over at Library 2.0 An Academic Perspective, Laura Cohen has a post commenting on my recent article in Computers in Libraries. She worries about the scale of 2.0 projects and how libraries can share what they’ve done so that we aren’t always reinventing the wheel. The project of remaking the Libraries site at UH may seem large and ambitions but it also has to be scaled for our library which has a very small Web Services staff. I spent a lot of time looking at existing open source content management systems and the MAIN reason we didn’t go with one of those was the skill set of my staff. I’m proud of the system we built but it is my hope to use other open source systems in the future and just tie them together.
One thing that didn’t come across well in my article is the reason we use a combination of technologies is because we don’t want to reinvent the wheel. For me that is what small pieces loosely joined really means. So we leaverage existing supported blogging and wikis software. We are also hoping to leverage work from Oregon State’s LibraryFind Project in the spring for federated searching, and an open source calendering system for our events. I’m always trying to keep my eyes open for work others are doing that is interesting and similar. For a long time, this was daunting. Things like code4lib (listserv, channel, planet code4lib, and conference) help, as does prolific blog reading, which gets you the right people to talk to. Then you have to have the courage to sit now and start the conversations. Probably my favorite moment from Internet Librarian this fall was getting to talk to John Blyberg about his work with Innovative ILS at AADL. As a result, I got a PHP class that will query the patron API, which saved me and immeasurable amount of time. I’m always on the hunt for open source tools that can be of use to libraries. Today, I was psyched to find out about OJAX.
I agree that libraries need to do a better job of collaborating and sharing code. I’m not sure there is a better way to do it than what is currently going on with code4lib. People who are doing development you need to speak up and get your stuff out there for others to see. It doesn’t do anyone any good if people don’t know your code exists! For those of you looking for open source tools to use you need to Get out there and see what other folks are doing but also understand what you are getting into. Open source isn’t a cake walk but it can provide productive solutions.
Karen, at my library we don’t even have anything along the lines of a Web Services staff! Elements of your project look interesting to me because we’re also using both Movable Type and MediaWiki for the same reasons as you.
The efforts you’re making to find what you need are amazing, but I keep thinking about all the others who are making (or trying to make) similar efforts. Some of this is inevitable. But considering that we are one profession, and sometimes have similar goals at least on the conceptual level, I still hold out hopes that more systematic sharing will go on.
All the best with your Web site project!