Open Source Open Access: a Hot Library Combo
Open Source Open
Access: a Hot Library Combo
As library budgets dwindle at an alarming rate, Librarians
are weighing other options to trim down their spending. One area has been to adopt freely available
applications over the more fancied proprietary solutions. This justifies why my fellow Librarians have
become so much interested and excited in learning more about open culture
especially open source and open access, which are becoming an indispensible
combo for progressive library solutions.
This hot combo may be likened to Siamese twins who need and complement
each other in many ways. What many of my
Librarian colleagues’ may not realize is that whilst open applications come
without license fees, and will most likely save significant library funds, open
culture is about so much more than a
price tag.
In this dialogue I will attempt to provide a brief (and not
conclusive) overview of the history and definition of open source and open
access. Wherever appropriate, facts and
statistics have been included as evidence to combat fear, uncertainty and doubt
(FUD) that surround open culture.
Research evidently reveals and has taught me that open
culture is all about collaboration, community, sharing and openness. At the advent all software was open source;
all software was developed in the open and distributed for free among colleagues
and friends. Currently, the traditional
software licenses that we are now familiar with within our library or home environs
do not take the form the first developers envisioned for future of
software. It’s all about proprietary and
making profits.
Open Source
The President and CEO of Malaysia’s state-owned
ICT Company MIMOS Berhad, Dr Tengku Mohd Azzman Shariffadeem, made the
following interesting observation ‘in terms of open source, we have new
opportunities. They come about because there is a new movement of sharing. And
the open source system is just one manifestation of this culture. The networks
we have created through the internet allow this sharing to happen in a very
efficient way.’ From an African
perspective, Bildad Kagai, CEO of a Kenyan open source company and Coordinator
of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), reinforced
the above thoughts by stating that Open source and free software is the way to
go for us (Africans (Zimbabweans)), but there are many challenges, including
policy issues. Kramer further contends
that, Open Source Software (OSS), hybrid and proprietary options currently
compete head-to-head in almost every market around the world. It’s a fact that
OSS is among the fastest growing and most competitive classes of software in
today’s market.
Open
Access
According to Peter Suber (2004, rev. 2013)
Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of
most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Public Library of Science defines OA as “unrestricted access and
unrestricted reuse.” Basically, OA
removes price barriers (subs, licensing fees, pay-per-view fees) and permission
barriers (mostly copyright and licensing restrictions).
Benefits of OA research include the following; accelerated discovery,
public enrichment, improved education and visibility for both institutional and
author. Models of OA are Open Access
Journals (OAJournals), Open Access Books (OABooks) and Institutional
Repositories (IRs). Importantly they are
two OA levels;
- Gold open access means that the final published version is permanently and freely available online for anyone, anywhere to read.
- Green open access refers to self-archiving of your article, and often applies to earlier versions of your paper.
The above
explanations on both open source and access provide an interesting and
insightful read. One immediately notices
the common characteristics of my hot combo no restrictions, no copyright, no
licensing fees, free download, use and redistribute. They all follow the 4Rs framework of open
culture;
- Reuse
- Revise
- Remix
- Redistribute
Knowing this
background is not enough though. My bone
of contention (I repeat) is that it is essential for libraries to truly embrace
the founding philosophy behind open culture for libraries to effectively
participate in the various open culture communities readily available
globally. My 20+ years of experience has
shown me that many Zimbabwean libraries have adopted open applications, but
continue to act as though it were a proprietary system. Implementing and manipulating open
applications is now a rule changer period.
Nicole C. Engard (2010) notes: What it has simply translated to be is
that ‘one no longer needs a vendor’s approval to add a feature to the system,
one no longer has to depend on any one vendor for support and definitely one no
longer gets to work in one’s own library bubble’.
What do I mean above? As I have elaborated before, open
culture is about community and therefore the only way open applications can
survive is if there is an active community behind it. The community can be multi-layered with an
active combo of developers, users, bug testers, manual writers, translators,
editors, researchers, publishers. The
list is endless.
In the case of open source especially, there is this huge
misconception that again my Librarian friends (and many others) have is that to
participate in an open source community they must know how to write code; this
is not the case anyone with skills or no skills can be a member. It has been argued that no software
application can make it into production if it has not first been tested; and
who better test it than someone who plans to use it daily? No software application is easy to use
without well written documentation, and who better to write that than someone
who has learned to use the software the hard way? A practical example is the abcd ILS workflows
and processes, a manual compiled from my personal experience manipulating abcd
and putting the facts and figures in layman’s lingo. And no software application without
well-organized menus and navigation will be considered user friendly; who again
is better to tell people how to organize things than a Librarian. Another excellent example is the evolution of
abcd from DOS to free windows and finally open, from complicated DOS appearance
and commands to user friendly menus and navigation platform. This was achieved through unity of purpose
and active participation of the Isis (abcd) community.
I have always proffered that Librarians have a lot to offer
to open culture especially open source and open access. How? By not only being limited to
implementing open source but being pro-active and advocates; uploading,
downloading and providing easy access through OPACs to research content for
open access. My hope and wish is that
after dissecting my dialogue it will excite you to jump in and start to
communicate with others who are using and developing open applications so you
can find out how you can not only participate but positively contribute to
these open culture movements.
May I at this critical juncture point out that it is
important to remember that not every open application is right for every library,
but you should be able to settle for a couple or so that will either make your
workflow and processes more efficient in provision of better and robust institutional
clientele services. Further when
considering open source, it is important to think and evaluate the skills
available within your library or institution before making a final move or
concrete decision. Depending on the expertise
available within your library/institution you may have to outsource some areas
of implementing/migrating to an open source application. It is inevitable some manageable (let me
emphasize manageable) costs will be incurred such as fees for development and
customization, installation, training, helpdesk or support, and hosting. These costs are usually once off though.
Open Source vs Closed
Source (proprietary)
|
Fact
|
Myth
|
|
Over 550,000+ FOSS projects (29,000 Mature/Active
in past 6 months as of April 2016) in all fields of ICT
|
It's a Linux vs. Windows thing
|
|
Major FOSS solutions are more reliable than
proprietary counterparts; professional support available for FOSS
|
FOSS is not reliable or supported
|
|
About 90% of Fortune 1000 companies deploy
FOSS; Econet, Google, IBM, Sun, HP,
Oracle... promote FOSS
|
Big companies don't use FOSS
|
|
FOSS licenses are based on the copyright law
|
FOSS is hostile to "intellectual property“
|
|
Econet : $746M HP: $103.4B in; RedHat: $2B in
2015
|
There is no money to be made on FOSS
|
|
50% FOSS developers are paid, others volunteer
and contribute for personal motivations
|
The FOSS movement is unfair and unsustainable,
because programmers don't get paid for their efforts
|
|
Community growth requires significant
investment
|
If I start a FOSS project, plenty of developers
will start working for me for nothing
|
|
FOSS spearheads a new innovation model that all
should know about
|
FOSS is a programmer thing, users and
decision-makers should not worry about it
|
|
The percentage of innovative projects (about 13%)
is roughly the same in FOSS and proprietary software
|
FOSS is always playing catch-up with the
commercial world, where all innovation comes from
|
Clearing
Open Applications Myths
|
Fact
|
Myth
|
|
Over 550,000+ FOSS projects (29,000 Mature/Active
in past 6 months as of April 2016) in all fields of ICT
|
It's a Linux vs. Windows thing
|
|
Major FOSS solutions are more reliable than
proprietary counterparts; professional support available for FOSS
|
FOSS is not reliable or supported
|
|
About 90% of Fortune 1000 companies deploy
FOSS; Econet, Google, IBM, Sun, HP,
Oracle... promote FOSS
|
Big companies don't use FOSS
|
|
FOSS licenses are based on the copyright law
|
FOSS is hostile to "intellectual property“
|
|
Econet : $746M HP: $103.4B in; RedHat: $2B in
2015
|
There is no money to be made on FOSS
|
|
50% FOSS developers are paid, others volunteer
and contribute for personal motivations
|
The FOSS movement is unfair and unsustainable,
because programmers don't get paid for their efforts
|
|
Community growth requires significant
investment
|
If I start a FOSS project, plenty of developers
will start working for me for nothing
|
|
FOSS spearheads a new innovation model that all
should know about
|
FOSS is a programmer thing, users and
decision-makers should not worry about it
|
|
The percentage of innovative projects (about 13%)
is roughly the same in FOSS and proprietary software
|
FOSS is always playing catch-up with the
commercial world, where all innovation comes from
|
Practical
Open Models for Zimbabwean libraries
In our own Zimbabwean scenario, evidence at hand
shows me that the LIS sector has adopted a potpourri of open applications and
models. Popular applications being
manipulated include amongst others integrated library systems (ILS), operating
systems (OS), digital systems, browsers, word processing, content management
(CMS), social media tools, security and anti-virus.
The most trending ILS are abcd developed way back
in 1975 and distributed by abcdZim.org; koha and mandarin being promoted and
distributed by UZ and CUT libraries respectively. These ILS are robust in many ways and have
satisfactorily served their respective communities. Abcd, koha and mandarin take
up 90% of the market share, with the remaining 10% taken up by different
proprietary systems such as resource mate and millennium. Dissecting this further abcd is popular in the
NGO sector, Government College and research libraries, schools and public
libraries. Koha and mandarin are popular
choices in mostly academic libraries (university), with gradual penetration in
the other library sectors. Abcd has a vibrant local community active on
facebook (http://facebook.com/abcdZim.org
, google circles with links to the international abcd community of developers
and users (http://www.abcdwiki.net). Koha (http://koha-community.org)
and mandarin have international communities and less or no local community
participation.
In the digital space greenstone and D-Space have
proven to be applications of choice especially for Institutional Repositories
(IRs) for academic libraries. They have
vibrant and well supported communities through organizations such as ITOCA,
INASP. Linux and ubuntu have become the
OS of choice for most Librarians, together with the bundled openOffice for word
processing. Mozilla Firefox is popular
and leads the way in browser category, with joomla being a popular content
management system for web based applications.
Web 2.0 or 3.0 tools have been embraced for most social media platforms
especially facebook hugely popular amongst the Librarians, with twitter,
linked-in and google circles enjoying favorable attention. Avast and AVG are the most downloaded free
security and anti-virus systems. In
brief libraries are spoilt for choice period.
Open
access resources popular with Librarians include DOAJ (directory of open access
journals) http://doaj.org , DOAB (directory of
open access books), http://www.doab.org ,
SpringerOpen, http://www.springeropen.com/journals,
INASP http://www.inasp.info/en/training-resources/open-access-resources/open-access-information
, Institutional Repositories such as open Access Theses and Dissertations, http://oatd.org .
Again there is an abundance of OA resources to choose from.
Open
Access has been totally embraced (100%) by academic libraries and has become a
key component to augment research content, especially in these times of serious
library budget cuts. Evidence shows that
in all academic institutions ILS training there is a heavy emphasis on Open
Access resources. I have also noticed a
gradual uptake of OA resources within the other library sectors especially
government college and research libraries as they augment their limited
collections. There is strong and
effective support for OA in Zimbabwe especially from INASP and DOAJ amongst a
host of OA proponents.
An
interesting fact about open applications in our libraries is both the use of
open applications and open access especially on ILS OPACs, were they have
included open access resources by linking or redirecting clientele to
appropriate sites and resources. So many
libraries have built OPACs based on open CMS such as joomla on top of an open
ILS application (i.e. ABCD) and made a portal of open access resources. Wow what a real HOT combo! But a worrying trend I and other colleagues’
such as my college mate and now a renowned Researcher Takainganhamo Chisita is
that we’re are perennial downloader’s of content and little or no uploading of
research uptake takes place. Simply
Librarians research and development interest is at its weakest hence we heavily
rely on research evidence from the developed world even to prop up our local
content.
My findings confirm that the generality of Zimbabwean Librarians are
very knowledgeable about open culture systems; its different modes both open
source or open access, ways to source and manipulate these options. Libraries
and information centres can make a huge impact on local communities by
adopting, implementing and manipulating open applications taking full advantage
of ICTs and hopefully make a meaningful contribution in effective dissemination
of appropriate information services with overall positive contribution to
national development. However, awareness of Open Models or generally ICT tools
and applications is low, both in urban and non-urban Zimbabwe. One positive
solution is to increase take-up and run Open Models awareness campaigns through
manipulation and maximization of available and appropriate ICT tools and applications. One such activity is the ILS training offered
by the US Embassy Harare Resource Centre.
My dialogue is just a tip of the iceberg and an
attempt to stir debate on this subject, so am challenging you to share your
open culture experience with me and our LIS community at large.
Suggested
Essential Open Resources
- http://bhowatg.blogspot.com
- http://opensource.weblearning.net
- http://www.web2learning.net
- http://doaj.org
- http://www.doab.org
- http://www.springeropen.com/journals
- http://www.inasp.info/en/training-resources/open-access-resources/open-access-information
- http://bookboon.com
- http://opendoar.org
- http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/research-beyond-google
- http://www.plagiarism.org
References:
- Engard, N.C. Oxford: Chandos, 2010. Practical Open Source for Libraries
- Lalitha,
P., 2004. Impact of information communication technology on library and
information centres.[Internet] Available http://www.alibnet.org/events/lectures/MLSeries7_PLalita.pp. Accessed April 15th, 2016 - Vinitha,
K. (et.al)(2006) Impact of Information Communication Technology on
Library and its Services. Paper presented at the DRTC-ICT Conference on Digital Learning environment, January 2006 in Bangalore.
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