open v closed or simple v complex?

I attended a very interesting workshop at Broad Valleys Federation meeting on Open Source Software in Libraries. Nicole Engard spoke quite persuasively on the benefits of open source and contrasted it with Microsoft's wares as an example of closed or proprietary software.

But somehow that didn't seem to be the point to me. I was struck by the irony that she was talking up open source with a presentation running on a Mac. It seems to me that Apple is actually the epitome of closed proprietary hardware and software. If anything that would seem to lend credence to the argument that what you should really be striving for is an entirely closed infrastructure. Where Microsoft went wrong was in trying to make software that was compatible with a wide variety or hardware and software options. The frustration could be from the fact that they've tried to be too open rather than too closed.

Then I listened to Paul Thurrott on Windows Weekly. He argued that where Apple really has the market cornered is in simplicity and elegance of design. I think it's the simplicity that really appeals to people. The iPad and iPhone have one button to take you to the home screen. I've often made the off hand remark that if you're content to live within the Apple universe, your life will be peaceful and hassle free. That's not something you can often aspire to in the technology world. But if you buy the latest products, download the latest updates and function through the Apple app store buying and using Apple approved apps, you're pretty much guaranteed a pleasant user experience.

Unfortunately, that's not always the case in the open source world. And I'm not going to get into an argument about the value of open source software because I use quite a bit and I like it. But I use Apple and Microsoft products as well. That's probably partly me and partly my job. As a tech consultant, I don't think I can afford to be seen as an evangelist or shill for any particular product line. I also see advantages and disadvantages to all of them.

I think the challenge for librarians is to provide simple and elegant solutions instead of complex ones. And I think that's a big challenge. We want to provide all the options and answers while our customers often just want something that works. We librarians can get rather ideological and rigid in our positions. And that might prevent us from compromising and adding alternate solutions. Even if we're dedicated to running an open source based library, we may want to have a few computers or gadgets running Mac OS or Windows software for the comfort and convenience of our customers. And the same goes for libraries that primarily run Windows or Apple. They should also try to find some open source apps and gadgets for people to try out. From my happy place, I'd like see librarians making decisions on ILS, databases and other software primarily on the basis of usability. We need to focus on finding the best tools for the task at hand. Kudos to Nicole Engard for her example of going with proprietary software when it makes sense for her to do so.

I always hate to see librarians wasting energy battling each other on ideological grounds. In the meantime, our customers are finding our solutions too complicated and are turning to simpler ones like Google search, Kindle books, and iPad apps. We've got to turn our attention in that direction as well, if we're to stay in the game.

linux for library pcs

In May, I took an old IBM laptop that was destined for surplus and loaded Ubuntu on it to test the usability of Linux OS for library use. This has become the laptop I take with me on road trips. I want to see how it works and I figure it's less desirable for thieves and hackers.

I downloaded a recent stable version of Ubuntu onto my current laptop, burned it onto a CD and loaded it onto the IBM, reformatting the hard drive. This does erase everything you've got on the computer so be sure and backup or move contents before you do this. I have to say that the initial install didn't work. I was given several options, took my best guess and apparently chose the wrong one. So when I tried to boot the new OS, I was met with an error message. Linux doesn't come with instructions. Instead you have user forums. The forum solution for my problem had command line instructions. I chose to reinstall instead, this time making a different choice for how to format the hard drive. The second install was successful. But my initial thoughts were that this may not be for the faint hearted.

Once I've had a chance to work with it, I've discovered some pros and cons.

Pros:

• Switching to Linux and open source can potentially extend the life of some old computers. The Ubuntu Operating System came with other open source programs including Open Office. The whole thing was only about 800 MB in size. It doesn't require as much hard drive space, memory or processor power as Windows, particularly Windows Vista.
• You can do most common computer tasks easily using open source software:
  - Surf the internet with Firefox - wifi connections are easy to set up
  - Do office tasks with Open Office - word processing, spreadsheets, presentations
  - Listen to music, download podcasts
  - Upload and edit photos from your digital camera
  - Work on graphics
  - Watch YouTube videos
  - Open and read PDF files
  - Play DVDs and CDs
  
• It's pretty easy to pdate current and download new open source programs. I made this much harder than it had to be until I found out where to go within the system to find more program options.
• It's pretty secure. Most spyware and viruses are designed to go after Windows systems. Firefox vulnerabilities have been exploited so open source is certainly not invulnerable. But they seem to come up with fixes fairly quickly.
  

In short,my Ubuntu has performed admirably. Right off the bat, it got called into service at the May Montana Shared Catalog meeting when Sarah's Dell couldn't get onto the hotel's wi-fi connection. My Ubuntu laptop located and got onto the hotel's wi-fi easily. It also displayed web pages, word.docs and excel files (with one exception that will show up in the cons) from the internet, and ran PowerPoint presentations off a USB drive. Few knew they weren't looking at a Windows computer.

Cons:

• If there are specific programs you have to have on your computer because of patron demand, you want to make sure these programs have Linux versions. Some don't - iTunes and Windows Media Player are good examples. There are open source music players and podcatchers but if patrons use library computers to purchase and download music or video from iTunes or stores that use WMA copy protection, they probably won't be able to access these via open source programs. I haven't spent a lot of time researching this, but I don't think you could use a Linux computer as an OverDrive download station for the above reasons.
  
• It doesn't work well with all Microsoft "features." During the MSC demos, the open office spreadsheet program would not open an excel spreadsheet using macros. This isn't a bad thing for security sake, but if you're doing very sophisticated spreadsheet or database work, you'll probably want to stick with the software you're currently using. Neither could Open Office cope with a PowerPoint 2007 presentation at a Parmly program I attended. A Windows computer running PowerPoint 2003 can't open a 2007 file either, but it will give you an option to download a viewer. Open Office can't do anything with them. But being open source, someone might be working on or have even come up with a fix for this problem already.
• If there's something that's a bit buggy or you really don't like, you're pretty much stuck with it until someone in the community decides to fix it. That is, if you're a regular library user. If you have programming skills, you can get into the open source code and make changes yourself. But if coding's not your strong point, you may feel frustrated if you don't like a current version. And you don't really know when new versions are coming out unless you read the updates.
• Most open source software does not come with tutorials or much help. If you have users who are already comfortable using browsers or office software, they can probably figure out the open source versions fairly easily. But if you're getting started with graphics design, moving right into Gimp can be a bit daunting. Not that PhotoShop isn't daunting as well, but there is a lot more help available to learn the program.

It's still a Windows world so I think that most libraries will want to have at least a few Windows PCs available. It's what people expect. But putting Linux on some of your older PCs may be a good way to help keep those computers usable and help meet demand for a bit longer. Open source is getting more user friendly all the time. I think that most library staff with a good computer comfort level could use and update it pretty easily. There are also vendors like Userful that will take care of it all for you for a fee. My advice is to give it a try. What have you got to lose? Besides your sanity and for me, that's probably pretty much gone already.

I'd love to hear what others have to say about open source in their libraries.

Open Source Software

You hear a lot of talk about open source software particularly in techie circles. And it has some real advantages - namely it's usually free. But you do need to keep in mind that open source software is created by techies for techies and is therefore not for the faint of heart.

I'll share a recent experience as an illustration. I wanted to create an audio introduction to the podcasting lesson for the Montana Library 2.0 Challenge. I decided to try out Audacity - open source audio recording software. I found it was easy to download and install and figure out how to use. I even figured out how to do some basic editing. Great!

Then I needed to save it. When I tried to just save it I got a warning that it would be saved as an .aup file that few if any other programs could use and that I might choose to export it as a different type of file. Okay, so I looked at some of my other options. One was to export as an MP3 file. Perfect! MP3 files are the common format used by podcasters. So, I chose that option and was prompted to name my file.

That's when the fun began. I got a popup box telling me that a file lame_enc.dll was required and it wanted to search my newly created folder for the missing file. Not surprisingly, it didn't find it there because my new folder was still empty. I went back to Sourceforge.net the website where I got Audacity and searched for the missing file name. I found a file called lame-3.97.tar which looked like it would contain the missing file. So, I downloaded it. When I tried to open it, I was prompted for the program. Huh? I tried Audacity and got a popup warning that it was looking for a .dll file, did I really want to use the .tar file instead? Probably not. I chose to let Windows look for an appropriate program on the web. It helpfully found a number of zip utilities that I could purchase for roughly $20-$50. No thanks! But thanks for telling me that I needed a zip utility. Didn't I already have one on my computer? Apparently not this one.

Luckily, I do have some techie tendencies so I decided to look for freeware and went to Tucows. There I found a free zip utility that was rated well - ShellZip. So I downloaded and installed it. I must add it was one of the slowest downloads in history. But I went back to the lame-397.tar file and told Windows to open it with ShellZip. And I got a whole mess of files, none of which was lame_enc.dll. Let me add just how much I hate dealing with unzipped files that I have to try to figure out what to do with.

Okay, my frustration was definitely mounting. What now? Well, perhaps I just wasn't seeing the right one in the mess of lame files (very aptly named, I might add). So, perhaps I could use the Windows search mechanism to look for lame_enc.dll? Well, it did find it - in a program I'd never heard of TC Web Conferencing. So, all I had to do was direct Audacity to look there for the required file and my MP3 file was created. But the whole saving as an MP3 process took a good hour and a couple of needless downloads to accomplish.

Like I said, this is not for the faint of heart or anyone who gives in easily to frustration. The assumption with most open source software is that you know what all the stuff is and how to use it. There are few, if any, instructions and those that you do find are seldom helpful unless you're a computer programmer or software engineer. But there are a lot of useful open source software options out there. So, if you've got a lot of patience and/or you enjoy a good challenge, it's well worth pursuing. If not, you might want to go with an off-the-shelf software product that you buy complete with support and upgrades.