FOSS4(small)Lib
How feasible are FOSS projects for small institutions/departments?
How do we make it easier?
Code4Lib Midwest 2014
July 23-24
Megan Kudzia
Albion College Library
What's So Attractive About FOSS?
- Pretty shiny things!
What's So Attractive About FOSS?
What's So Attractive About FOSS?
What's So Attractive About FOSS?
Islandora at Albion
- Small school (FTE 1350 - 1400)
- Various use cases for a digital repository:
- Document retention
- Access to archives photographs
- Access to digitized material
- Wanted something less expensive, more customizable
- Omeka wasn't robust enough
So Why Is It Difficult?
So Why Is It Complicated?
Lack of:
- Skill sets
- Experience
- Documentation that takes this into account
Determining Feasibility pt. 1
Not super helpful:
- Benchmarking against other same-size institutions
- Looking at job titles from teams at larger institutions
Albion's Experience
- We talked to Grinnell (hi, Becky!) - slightly bigger
- We talked to MSU (hi guys!) - WAY bigger
- Didn't see many other similar sized/local implementers at the time
- We knew we had at least some of the skill sets needed but?
Getting Buy-In, Responsibly
It's tricky to:
- Explain the scope of a FOSS project to less-techy bosses, administrators, boards of directors
- Stay on the same page as your IT folks
- Cultivate a good relationship with IT, depending on campus politics
Difficulties Become Clear
- 20+ installs of Islandora stack
- Database config issues were difficult to troubleshoot
- Difficulty reading docs:
- Which version am I on? Interlinkage?
- Drupal docs are separate
- What's really a dependency and what isn't?
- Uncertain dev timeline
- Relevant staff sporadically available
Not the Dead Weight Feel!
FEAR
- If we complain/offer help it will be rejected because:
- We failed
- We're not smart enough
- We didn't try hard enough
Giving Back
- Hat Tip Becky Yoose (who has an awesome hat!)
- Creating consortia
- Mozilla model for contribution (also Jennie Rose Halperin via The Real Arty)
- Documentation - maybe we can also contribute?
Where we are:
- Again, h/t Becky Yoose:
- Increasingly, vendors exist to offer SASS! Yay!
- Argument that OSS we all can't use isn't really open
More Good News
Where we can be:
- Continue consortial work
- Can we create mentor-ish relationships?
- Let's continue to express that we want to give back!
- Asking folks with experience, and sharing, may be best
Other Thoughts:
We are using some FOSS successfully
- Wordpress, Drupal, MARCEdit, etc.
- Foundation-based FOSS?
- What else could we try as a community?
Questions?
Photo Credits:
Money by 401(K) 2012
Philosoraptor by Jostin Asuncion (I think)
FOSS4(small)Lib
By Megan Kudzia
FOSS4(small)Lib
How feasible are FOSS projects at small institutions or one-person shops?
