I’ve found it interesting how some vendors are vilified (sometimes fairly, sometimes not) while others get a free pass — to the point where we no longer even think of them as vendors. Open source vendor? You’re cool. Vendor who blogs and gives talks about 2.0 stuff (a la Paul Miller, Stephen Abram and Tim Spalding)? You’re cool too. Product manager, marketing dude or executive at a company like Ex Libris or EBSCO or Elsevier? Not so much. And why is that? They’re all trying to sell something to libraries, right? They all want to make money from us. But some of these people are seen as being good and having our best interests at heart while others of them are seen as being out to screw us.

Once upon a time, I was asked to speak on a panel. So was Tim Spalding. Because I was a member of this organization, I was not paid and had to pay for my travel to get to the conference. Tim got paid to come and be a part of this panel, in which he spoke about his product, LibraryThing. I mentioned it to the organizers because I thought it was odd that a vendor get paid for the opportunity to drum up free publicity for his product. The organizer said that she really hadn’t thought of Tim as a vendor. Interesting. Is Tim an awesome guy who most of us think a great deal of? Certainly. Is he a very entertaining speaker? Without question. Does he sell stuff to libraries? Yes. Does he sometimes exhibit at conferences? Yes. Does that make him a vendor? I’d say so!

And that’s not to say that vendors are bad. Most aren’t. But I really take issue with the way our profession tends to idealize some types of vendors and vilify others. I think a lot of people have started to see this black-and-white thinking as problematic in light of the whole LibLime Koha fork thing. Because suddenly you have this open source company — a company that is supposed to be good and out to benefit the larger open source community — doing something that benefits them and their customers at the expense of the community. But weren’t we just hoisting the LibLime folks on our shoulders last year? Weren’t many of us (me included) promoting them and weren’t we excited when we saw their client list growing and growing and growing? (Many of us may still be happy to see their client list grow as it’s a sign that the market share of open source software in libraries is growing.)

Folks at OCLC definitely used to get a pass in the same way the open source folks did, though that seems to be changing as public perception shifts towards viewing them as a vendor that wants to gobble up and control our data (which is also a simplification). It reminds me a lot of how some librarians felt about Google — how they went from loving Google to feeling totally betrayed by them. I guess my take is that if someone makes their money off a library without working in it, they are a vendor. Consultants are vendors. People who sell products are vendors. People who sell services, like maintaining open source systems, are vendors. And all of them will put the good of their company over the good of libraries. That doesn’t make them evil — it makes them good businesspeople.

And again, with the Stephen Abram thing. I didn’t like his paper because it lacked a level of quality and polish that I would expect from Stephen and a company like SirsiDynix. It was about at the level of professionalism of a poorly-researched blog post (hey, like this!). I take issue with anything that doesn’t cite where its information is coming from and uses phrases like “some companies”, “some software” “some argue.” There were lots of factual inaccuracies and opinion masquerading as fact (”Proprietary software has more features. Period. Proprietary software is much more user-friendly”). And what was up with the completely pointless chart on page 4? It was just an awful piece. The fact is, there are a lot of good arguments against open source and against choosing an open source ILS, but Stephen’s lack of good hard facts and citations made any point he made seem less credible.

Part of me started to wonder on Friday if someone from an open source company wrote a similar screed against proprietary systems, would it garner the same reaction from the Twittersphere/blogosphere? And I hate to say it, but I think the answer is no. If someone from Equinox went off on the weaknesses of proprietary systems in a way that was badly researched and perhaps contained some hyperbole, many folks would probably nod their head and say, “yeah, they do suck.” Some of us might send the link to our colleagues, writing that it contains a great distillation of why open source is the better option for the ILS. I’m not saying this to damn anyone or shame anyone, because I know I do it too sometimes without even thinking about the double-standard.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve been so sleep-deprived lately that I’ve been seeing everything through whatever the opposite of rose-tinted glasses are (green?). I guess what I’m trying to say is that we really can’t look at things as being so black and white. We can’t say open source=good, proprietary=bad. It’s not that simple. Stephen Abram is not a bad person because he wrote a crappy “position paper. OCLC isn’t necessarily evil. Open source vendors aren’t necessarily good. We shouldn’t assume that a vendor is out to take us to the cleaners and steal all our data, but neither should we assume that a vendor has our best interests at heart (no matter how cool they or their representatives are). Things are really, really gray, and require a much more critical eye than we sometimes have by default.

Updated: I just read Cindi Trainor’s The Sacred Cows of Library Technologists, which I think dovetails so nicely with my points and is far, far more eloquently written. Check it out!

Does someone really need to understand the back-end of a system to capitalize on it? I don’t believe that’s true. Most people don’t know how to build a car; they don’t understand all of its internal mechanisms. Yet we still drive cars. We just know where to go when we need help. I have no clue how to debug things in Drupal. I’ve never made any attempt to understand the internal mechanisms of it. Does that mean I shouldn’t have used it the three times I have for classes? No way! I can install it and I can use it for the purposes I’ve had for it. I can’t do a lot of the fancy things a lot of people do with Drupal, but it worked fine for what I needed it to do. All my limited knowledge means is that when I have a problem, I need to look up the answer or rely on the community of Drupal users and developers for help. I did just that and thanks to the community, I was able to fix any problems I’ve had.

Yeah, I’d like to know how to fix every little thing in Drupal and create my own modules, but I’d also like to know how to fix my car. Priorities. In my position, it’s much more important that I know a lot about instruction and a decent amount about instructional technologies. Programming is not a necessary skill-set (not that I wouldn’t like to have mad coding skillz). If I’m going to engage in professional development, it will be to learn more about information literacy instruction and assessment, not to take a class on PHP or JavaScript. I’ve even done stuff with PHP and JavaScript, but it just involved messing around with stuff that already existed. I’d break it, figure out what I did and how it impacted things, and then fix it. Eventually I’d usually get it to do what I needed it to do. Yes, I’d love to have a better understanding, but it’s not a priority with my job and there just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to learn everything I’d like.

Should library schools require technology classes? Without a doubt! I don’t think anyone should come out of library school without basic web design skills, a basic understanding of library technologies and Internet technologies, the ability to assess technologies, the ability to be fearless with trying out new technologies, and probably a whole host of other things I’m not thinking of right now with pregnancy brain. But does everyone need to come out knowing how to code? No! While technology is a part of every job, not every librarian needs to know how the back-end of the catalog works or needs to know how to debug a Drupal module. Instruction is a critical part of most of our jobs as librarians too (be it formal instruction, reference assistance, or staff training), but not everyone is required to take classes on instruction. And probably most people don’t need to know as much about instruction as I (and other people in similar positions) do.

People can do so many different things with a degree in Library and Information Science. I think it’s important for everyone to have a certain baseline of technology skills, but beyond that, it’s really dependent on what sort of job you want. The technology skill-sets you need to be a head of instruction vs. a systems librarian vs. a web developer vs. a reference librarian vs. an archivist are very different. I think for any library school student, it’s a good idea to hedge your bets and not just train yourself for a single job. It’s important to take tech classes, but if you know you don’t want to have a job where you’ll need to program, you shouldn’t have to. Focusing only on technology and not at all on public service-type classes is an even bigger mistake, since anyone developing tech for libraries needs to understand user behavior and how to train librarians on how to use the technologies.

Dorothea already wrote a lot of really brilliant things about teaching tech in library school, so there’s really no point in my going into more depth when she already said it all. Like most things she writes, I agree with 99% of it.

But my mind is on all of those people who are already out of library school and didn’t have the opportunity to take tech classes (or perhaps just chose not to because they didn’t think it would be important). Those are the people I write my column for. And the reality is that there are many libraries where no one has good programming skills (mine included) or the money to hire/rent talent. There are also many libraries where no one has an MLS at all, so the issue of tech in LIS education is irrelevant to them. I started writing my column because I saw too many articles that only highlighted things that could be done for a lot of $$$ or with serious programming talent on staff. I wanted to highlight the things that people could accomplish at almost any library so long as they are willing to experiment, maybe break things once, twice (or twenty times), and rely on documentation and the robust user communities that are a part of most of the tools I highlight. I like to show the range of what can be done with any technology, from things that require significant programming to the very simple nearly-out-of-the-box job. That way, they know what’s possible with the software at both ends of the spectrum.

I want small libraries to realize that they can have a decent website without necessarily knowing HTML or having a web designer on staff. I’ve learned over time that most librarians have no idea what they’re capable of doing with tech. I certainly didn’t think I was capable of doing anything with Drupal until I tried it out and realized that it wasn’t as beastly as I’d imagined (though the whole taxonomy/node stuff really took me a while to understand properly). I want to encourage people to try things out and to realize that they’re capable of so much more than they think they are. So, while I’d love for every library to have someone on staff with mad tech skillz, it’s important for people to realize that they still can do a lot of great stuff with tech even if they don’t have tons of money or programming talent.

Interested in learning more about SOPAC 2.0? Check out this new Talking with Talis podcast with John himself. There’s also a brief article on SOPAC 2.0 in Library Journal.

I think this is a common problem with open source projects and social software communities. Frequently the tools or communities so many of us depend on are run by one individual. And it’s usually fine until that person gets too busy to maintain it. I’ve had the same issue with the Library Success Wiki. While once in a blue moon, someone will pop in and fix some stuff on the wiki (people add to the wiki all the time, but I’m talking about the more maintenance-related tasks), I pretty much handle all of the maintenance. And that’s ok; it’s not particularly time-consuming to keep an eye on the Recent Changes feed each day and fix the errors of novice wiki editors. But I always wish I had more time to devote to it. I frequently get ideas for how to make the wiki better, but have no time really to make them happen. Anyone can pop into the wiki, create an account, and start implementing their own good ideas for making it better. I don’t have any more ownership over the wiki than you do; I just do the most basic wiki gardening. For all intents and purposes, this is an “open source community” which would benefit from the vision and effort of others. So if you’re perhaps not a coder but are looking for a social software project to contribute to, just pop over to the Library Success Wiki and think about what you might want to change/add. The beauty of a wiki is that your contribution can be as big or small as you want. You can add to an already-existing page, create a new page, or completely reorganize the wiki content.

Hopefully Feed2JS and the Library Success Wiki will continue to thrive and become far more than their creators had ever envisioned.

I really don’t know what happens! I start writing and my fingers just seem to take over. This is what happens when my husband goes away and leaves me alone with my thoughts. Sorry folks!

Something I frequently think about when I go to conferences is the whole idea of “service to the profession.” I’m not a fan of the idea that librarians must provide service outside of their daily work and I think, for way too long, there was a very specific prescription for how one even could provide service to the profession. I guess it’s the obstinate anti-authoritarian in me that hates being told that I need to do anything. On the flip side, I have discovered that helping and sharing with other librarians is really fun, whether it’s sharing knowledge or code, serving on a committee, teaching, writing or just sitting down with a colleague and showing them how something works. Even if it wasn’t fun, it’s worth helping your colleagues, because we would want someone to do the same for us (and we may need them to do the same for us one day).

I don’t like the term “service to the profession” because it feels so impersonal. We are the profession. Me. You. Your colleagues. The other library bloggers you read. The people you see at conferences. When you do something good for the profession, more often than not, you are doing something good for librarians. You’re not usually doing something for ALA, ACRL, PLA or some other organization; you’re doing it to benefit people just like you.

There are so many generous librarians out there who are putting their time and their passion into making things better for other librarians (usually for nothing). Sharing just seems to be the norm in this profession, which is why we really should be more into open source software and the open source development model than we are (maybe we’re better at sharing than we are at collaborating?). I’m amazed by the generosity of the people I meet in this profession. I have only e-mailed one “important person” in this field for help who blew me off; everyone else has been willing to help and offer advice when I ask for it. Librarians are frequently willing to take that hard-won knowledge and give it away. I do it all the time. Maybe I shouldn’t? It’s hard to be an expert when you give people the tools to learn as much as (if not more than) you about a subject. From experience, it feels much better to see someone you taught using the tools successfully and passing that knowledge on to others than it is to hold onto knowledge with a death grip.

This sharing is not the norm in many other fields. In some fields, people hold onto their knowledge as if it were made of gold. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is money. Knowledge is job security. I’m friendly with the University Webmaster and he once told me that he has a huge list of resources for web design. When I suggested he put his collection on del.icio.us, he balked, saying that he doesn’t share that information; he just gives it out to people he likes in drips and drabs. I’ve gotten a few of those drips and drabs, so I guess I should consider myself lucky. He’s a great guy, very willing to help me when I’m trying to figure something out. But he feels, like many, that his knowledge is what gives him an edge over the competition and that giving it away completely will make him lose his edge. I can’t entirely disagree with all that. I know that my tech knowledge helped me get my job and does give me an edge in my work. It makes me indispensable (or at least less dispensable than I would be otherwise). So why would I want to give away my intellectual capital so freely? I’ll tell you a secret… it feels really good. I remember the first time I heard that someone started a wiki because of what I taught them. It was an amazing feeling. Giving it all away is a whole lot more satisfying than hoarding it.

Maybe it’s because sharing is so natural in our field that some people reacted so negatively to the idea of a library charging librarians to attend webinars offered by their staff. The Orange County Library System in Orlando, Florida is one of the most innovative and technology-forward systems in the country. I am constantly impressed with the things they do, from creating online tutorials to offering classes on podcasting to getting young people using technology creatively. Clearly, they have a lot to teach all of us. However, instead of freely sharing that information, they are charging librarians for it:

PUSHING IT FORWARD: TAKING YOUR LIBRARY TO THE NEXT LEVEL!
Our technology series can give you the edge you need. The Orange County Library System is a recognized leader in information technology. Grab lunch (or breakfast!), login and join colleagues from around the country for presentations by OCLS staff, discussion and idea sharing online. RESERVE YOUR SEAT TODAY! $75 per session or $199 for entire series

My initial reaction, like Helene’s, was quite negative. I felt that it was awful to be making money that way off your fellow librarians. I especially felt that way when I saw that they are currently doing Helene’s Learning 2.0 program, for which she has generously shared the model, the materials and her expertise. I am not against libraries charging a bit for Webinars to cover the costs of the technology infrastructure or to get people to show up, but at $75 a pop, I can’t imagine they aren’t trying to turn a profit. Even if just 20 people attended each session, they would make $4,500. I guess it adds insult to injury to know that they used to offer these webinars for free.

I started to think more about my reaction to this last night. What’s wrong with making money this way? Lots of other organizations offer for-pay trainings for their peers. Some non-profits offer classes in their subject areas for money. Also, our library organizations offer classes that we have to pay for. Like Helene, I find it frustrating to see people charging for what we’re willing to give away for free. However, while it’s not something I’d do, it’s not wrong. It just doesn’t fit into our view of professional service. I may be totally off-base, but maybe we’re reacting to this in the same way some people reacted to that library in Arizona getting rid of Dewey numbers? It’s certainly not something I’d ever do at my library, but you can’t blame ‘em for trying, especially in Florida with the budget disasters going on there.

I guess this feels to me like someone using open source code in a proprietary and costly application. We all got our ideas from somewhere. None of us can pretend that we do not owe someone a debt of gratitude for some of the cool things we’ve implemented in our work or outside-of-work professional life. I got the idea for Five Weeks to a Social Library from the ALA 2.0 Bootcamp. I got the inspiration for using del.icio.us to create annotated web guides that are syndicated on the library website by looking at the Washington State Library’s blog. Helene Blowers was inspired to do Learning 2.0 by something Stephen Abrams wrote. Whether we copy an idea wholesale, make it our own, or just use it for inspiration, we can’t pretend that there isn’t someone in this profession we don’t owe a debt of gratitude to. If someone was willing to freely share their knowledge with us, why not pay it forward?

When we were choosing participants for Five Weeks to a Social Library, I really had my eye out for people whose applications indicated they would pay it forward. I think we chose well, because many of our former participants are teaching their colleagues about social software and are even spreading the gospel beyond their library. One of our participants, Holly Ristau, gave a talk this month on wikis at the Tribal College Librarians Institute meeting. How cool is that? It’s really gratifying for all of us who were involved in making Five Weeks happen, to see our participants using what they’ve learned and giving back to the profession.

The other great thing that comes from sharing are the connections you make with other people. Had I not chosen this path, I would never have met all the wonderful people I’m now connected to; many of whom I consider friends. They have inspired me, challenged me, supported me, made me laugh, and held me up in tough times. I’ve connected to a much bigger world outside of my library and I think that is a huge benefit that comes from “professional service.” I feel unbelievably lucky to have the friends in the profession I do, and I can’t imagine how different my life would have been had I kept things locked up inside.

We all have something to offer others in the profession. If you think you don’t, it’s more a reflection of your self-esteem than any reality. Have you ever had a good idea? Do you know about some really cool technology, product or idea that could benefit libraries? Have you done something at your library that was successful (a program, service, technology, etc.)? No matter how small you may think that achievement is, there may be someone out there right now looking for what you already know or trying to do what you’ve already achieved. Why not share it? Share it on the Library Success Wiki. Share it on listservs. Share it on a blog. Share it in a journal. Share it at a conference. Whatever you do, just please do share it. Think of how much easier our lives would be if we stopped reinventing the wheel and started sharing more.

On the flip side, I think there is a danger of giving too much. On the panel I was a part of for PLA, Tom Peters described “Second Life burnout.” Lots of people would volunteer for the Second Life Library 2.0 and would spend hours there, staffing the reference desk and just generally making things great. They’d spend so much time that they’d end up neglecting their first life. Finally, something would have to give and many of them left the Second Life Library never to return. I think people who are very excited about something can run the risk of working on it with a level of intensity that is unsustainable in the long term. Second Lifers do it. Wikipedians do it. Lots of people involved in online communities do it. I do it. It’s important to find that balance that allows you to work on the projects you’re passionate about and not let go of the other things in your life.

It was telling for me how exhausted I felt throughout the ALA conference; like I’d been run over by a bus. It’s been a crazy few years and I haven’t really had the chance to stop and take stock in a long time. I’ve been feeling kind of at loose ends lately; like I’m not sure what my next step should be and what I should be moving towards in the long term. I first started writing and speaking to establish myself professionally (I had no idea at the time how much I would enjoy both activities). I was working towards something. I’m at a point where I feel like I have a lot of options, but I’m not sure which direction to move in. I’ve discovered that I’m most passionate about something (teaching and online education) that I never thought was “my thing” before, and now I don’t know how to reorganize my priorities and get to do the sorts of things I want to do (like adjunct instruction for a library school program or technology training). My career sort of took on a life of its own over the past two years and now I need to make real decisions in order to move towards the career I want two, five, ten and twenty years from now. But I’m not sure what my next step should be. As I told Andrew Pace at ALA, “I just need someone to tell me what I should be doing!” Pretty ironic for someone who hates to be told what to do as much as I do.

But whatever I’m doing, I will be sure to share it with you. The connections I have made with you all through these magical tubes we call the Internet make me feel so excited about my work and this profession. To all of you who read blogs and listservs but never comment, consider sharing ideas. Consider connecting to others. While it may seem like “just more work” the value of the connections you make to other (both on an emotional and professional level) are immeasurable.

The goal of this site is to create a flexible framework that allows for users to set up a social learning environment or a more traditional learning environment depending on the needs of the learners within the site. With this current framework, both approaches are supported.

So cool! But you may get even more excited when you check out some of these features:

# a personal workspace;
# a group workspace;
# the ability for site members to create informal working groups;
# the ability to create formal class spaces;
# a podcasting platform;
# a WYSIWYG text editor;
# wiki functionality;
# personal and class blogs;
# rss feeds for the entire site, individual courses, individual terms, and individual users;
# personal image galleries;
# personal file repositories;
# the ability to create private, invitation-only groups;
# social bookmarking, with searching within bookmark descriptions;
# spam protection;
# assignment calendars by course;
# event calendars for site-wide events;
# configurable user profiles with searchable text descriptions;
# the ability to create lists of “friends” among site members

This is what open source is all about, isn’t it? I’m thrilled to see tools like Drupal, Wordpress and more being adapted for educational use. We can’t all afford things like WebCT and Angel, and frankly, most of us don’t want to use them. Drupal sure was a lot easier to manage than WebCT!

While some of these companies have tried to put “lipstick on a pig” by giving libraries small things they want (oooh! RSS feeds! All of our problems are solved!), Roy argues “you can’t simply provide incremental changes to your legacy code. You need to think strategically and invest in some serious re-engineering.” And I don’t know how many companies are really willing to do that.

The idea of an Open Source ILS is a bit scary when you don’t have someone capable of running it, but companies are springing up who will manage it for you. I remember meeting some folks from LibLime at ALA Annual 2005 in Chicago and thinking “what a smart idea! We need companies who can manage this open source stuff for us, since so many of us don’t have someone at the library who can!” This is what the open source business model is all about — providing support. Some of my colleagues and I have looked at Koha and some of the other open source projects. And we like what we see. So often, it’s the pain involved in making a change, I think, that keeps libraries married to these vendors. The pain involved in using the system has to become a certain amount greater than the pain (whether real or perceived) involved in switching vendors. As the vendors fall further and further behind the curve and the open source options start getting adopted by more libraries, we will likely see a sea change in this area.

John Blyberg cautions librarians to also avoid complacency. We should be looking seriously at these alternatives and how we can provide the services our patrons want and expect in the age of Netflix and Amazon. We, too, should be reading that Business Week article, because we often need to reinvent as much as our vendors do:

There’s no better example than Kodak of the importance of coming up with new ways of doing business — and the difficulties of succeeding. At its peak, Kodak was an icon of American technology innovation. Now it’s fighting to recover from a tech revolution that is strangling its core business. Kodak was late to recognize the problem, slow to react, and then went down the wrong innovation path. It faces many of the problems and is making many of the mistakes that any company can make when so threatened. Because of these delays and missteps, it’s still far from clear how Kodak’s story will play out. Yet it provides a vivid case study for businesses facing similar challenges.

If there is one thing most libraries have been doing all along, it’s coming up with new ways of doing business. Our mission may not change, but the way we fulfill that mission must and will continue to require new methods. Let’s be change leaders rather than following Kodak’s sad example and waiting too long in spite of all the signs telling us that the things around us are changing.

There are so many open source alternatives to the expensive options we use at libraries. There’s OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. I haven’t tried the new version (2.o — still in Beta), but I’ve heard it has a great database program that would make my disengagement from MS Office complete. With OpenOffice, you can still save programs as .doc files (and other MS-related extensions), so they can still be accessed by people who haven’t been seduced to the side of good and truth. There’s Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. Really, I can’t see any reason anyone would use IE, other than the fact that some library vendors have products that only work on IE (which is beyond absurd). There’s Thunderbird instead of Outlook Express. Honestly, I was nervous about switching to Thunderbird myself, but it works just as well as Outlook Express and I feel much safer opening my emails. There’s Real Alternative, which plays Real Audio files just as well as Real Player without dumping a of bunch junk and spyware on your computer to slow it down. There’s IM and Jybe! for providing virtual reference and co-browsing services. I tried out Jybe!’s co-browsing software (not Open Source, but free) and found it to be quite easy to use, though I have my doubts that most students would be willing to download Jybe! in the course of a virtual reference transaction. However, I am a big fan of using IM instead of virtual reference systems like QuestionPoint. Users shouldn’t have to download, disable, or change their habits in any way to get in touch virtually with a librarian. We have to learn to communicate using the methods they use. Finally, there’s .LRN, an open source course management system developed by MIT (and used by about 250,000 other folks) that rivals its expensive competitors (Blackboard, WebCT, etc.). I’m surprised that .LRN is not better known in the distance learning community. My husband downloaded it recently and we played around with it a good deal. I was impressed to say the least. Expect a review of .LRN from my hubby on the site in the next week or so, but do check it out yourselves.

And yet so many people don’t trust Open Source software. It’s hard to use! It’s hard to maintain! It’s unreliable! It’s unsafe! Or perhaps they think that Open Source software can only be run on computers using Linux as their operating system. Not true! Open Source is not all about lock-in like Microsoft is. It’s all about giving you options! I don’t think everyone should go out and install Mandrake or Fedora or SuSe Linux on their computer, but it costs nothing to try out Firefox or PDFCreator. And you may be surprised to find out how well these things work. Really, can it get much worse than Microsoft??? I think some people have gotten so used to poorly designed, insecure, unusable programs that they become suspicious of anything that offers convenience and usability.

Anyways, I’m getting off my soapbox now. I just hate to think that I am holding onto information that might be useful to my readers (or my Dad). So next time I download something great, I’ll be sure to mention it. Just know that if you’re using something expensive, clunky, or difficult to use, do check to see if there isn’t some better out there that was created by people who were just as annoyed with the proprietary options as you are.

Most of the library bloggers I know seem to use Firefox (or Safari), but I really haven’t seen it on library public access computers yet. I’m sure there are some libraries that have it installed, but all of the library administrators I’ve spoken to recently seemed very reluctant to switch from IE. I don’t really understand why. Yes, I know patrons hate change, but Firefox is just as easy to use as IE and practically has the same interface. It also lacks the security vulnerabilities of IE, which makes it ideal for use on computers used by patrons. It’s the best baby step a library can take into open source, and I really can’t understand why any library administrator would be opposed to installing it (other than the old “resistant to change” issue).

For you librarians who use Firefox at home, is it used in your workplace as well? How has it been received by patrons and staff? Have patrons had trouble using it? I’d love to hear some stories about libraries that are using some open source applications (Firefox, Open Office, etc.) and what their experiences have been. If you’re also interested in this subject, you should check out the Linux Librarian’s blog and website.