I was reading a story last week about the Linux Foundation‘s third annual report [PDF] of the Linux kernel, and in it was a section that talked about the affiliation of the programmers that contributed to the development of the kernel. This got me thinking about the affiliation of programmers in the library open source community. More on that after a brief detour to explain what the “kernel” is.

For those that don’t know the inner pieces of how computers are put together, the “kernel” is that part of the operating system that governs everything else. It gets to say what programs are run and shuts them down when they misbehave. It arbitrates access to devices like the keyboard and the disk drive. It is the first thing that runs when the computer starts up and the last thing to quit when the computer shuts down. It is the heart of the device you see in front of you. There are some parallels that could be drawn to integrated library systems. So this is a thought exercise down one of those parallels.

Much of the Linux kernel report is about the rate of change to the Linux kernel source code (faster pace, broader base of contributers). But there is also a section that talks about financial sponsorship of the work. Beginning on page 12, I’ve excepted a few bits under the heading “Who is Sponsoring the Work”

The Linux kernel is a resource which is used by a large variety of companies. Many of those companies never participate in the development of the kernel; they are content with the software as it is and do not feel the need to help drive its development in any particular direction. …

There are a number of developers for whom we were unable to determine a corporate affiliation; those are grouped under “unknown” in the table below. … The category “None,” instead, represents developers who are known to be doing this work on their own, with no financial contribution happening from any company.

The top 10 contributors, including the groups “unknown” and “none” make up nearly 70% of the total contributions to the kernel. It is worth noting that, even if one assumes that all of the “unknown” contributors were working on their own time, over 70% of all kernel development is demonstrably done by developers who are being paid for their work. … The picture since [kernel version] 2.6.30 [in 2009] shows some interesting changes:

Company Name	Number of Changes	Percent of Total
None	9,911	19.1%
Red Hat	6,219	12.0%
Intel	4,037	7.8%
Novell	2,625	5.0%
IBM	2,491	4.8%
unknown	2,456	4.7%
consultants	1,265	2.4%
Nokia	1,173	2.3%
Renesas Technology	1,032	2.0%

If an Open Source ILS was Linux…

The second largest contributor would be a company that bases its existence on the open source product. Red Hat is known as the most successful commercial distributor of the Linux kernel, and its version of the kernel is used and trusted by a variety of commercial players. In the integrated library system community, an equivalent company would be someone like Equinox or ByWater Solutions. This might be as you would expect.

From there the list gets interesting quickly. Intel is primarily known as a hardware manufacturer, but it ranks third in the list of contributors to the kernel. It is hard to come up with an equivalent in the library community, but we might think of someone who is tangentially related to integrated library systems — say, Gale or ProQuest. (Until recently, I might have put OCLC in this group. With its introduction of Web-scale Management Services, though, it probably falls into the next category.)

Then it gets really interesting. Novell and IBM both have their own lines of operating systems and supplemental software, but they are also very large contributors of open source code to the Linux kernel. It would be as if Innovative Interfaces and SirsiDynix, in addition to creating their own products, also contributed substantially to an open source integrated library system.

Okay, like I said, making this comparison is a stretch. But it does lead me to think what it is about the culture of Linux community and the business opportunity of an open source kernel that makes this happen. Is it one benevolent dictator at the top (a.k.a. Linus Torvalds) looking out for the best interests of all involved? Is it a diversity of needs (such as servers to desktops to set-top boxes to phones in the case of Linux) under a big umbrella that makes sure everyone find enough value to contribute to the whole? Is it a form of job advertisements seeking to hire the best of 19.1% doing development on their own time? Or is it some sense of comradeship that transcends organizational bounds?

I don’t have answers, but it does seem like a useful case study to examine as we think about how open source software is created and sustained in the library arena.

Schemes to add functionality to the web OPAC fall into four categories: web OPAC enhancements, web OPAC wrappers, web OPAC replacements, and integrated library system replacements. I’m outlining these four techniques in a report I’m editing for an OhioLINK strategic task force and a bit of a reality check on this categorization is desired, so if I’m missing anything big (conceptually or announcements of projects/products that fall into these categories), please let me know in the comments. Generally speaking, this list is ordered by cost/complexity to implement — from lowest to highest — as well as the ability to offer the described enhanced services from least likely to most likely.

Web OPAC enhancements are functions that are added to the existing web OPAC system. This most often entails additional product purchases from the automation vendor, such as the optional enhancements in WebPAC Pro for Millennium OPACs or content solutions in SirsiDynix. Enhancement can also be added through creative use of an existing web OPAC’s template functions, such as the method by which LibraryThing for Libraries can be added to OPAC displays.

Web OPAC wrappers use the existing web OPAC provided by the integrated library system as a source of information, but hide that information behind a completely new interface. The intervening system get that information from the integrated library system through a variety of mechanism. In some cases, it may be possible to use established protocols (such as Z39.50) or programming interfaces (such as an XML content server). In cases where such functionality is not available from the underlying integrated library system, a “screen-scraping HTML” technique may be required. ¹

One example of such a wrapper is the work at Ann Arbor Public Library on SOPAC. Short for “Social OPAC,” SOPAC is “a set of social networking tools integrated into the AADL catalog [that] gives users the ability to rate, review, comment-on, and tag items.”² It uses an open source content management system called Drupal as a structure through which the added functionality is provided. For example, when a user seeks the bibliographic information page for a catalog record, that request is made from the user’s browser to the Drupal software. The Drupal software in turn makes a request to the integrated library system for the bibliographic information it holds. The response from the ILS is parsed by the Drupal software for key information such as title, author, subjects, holdings, etc. This information is mixed with information stored in the Drupal database (ratings, tags, reviews, cover images, etc.) and a new web page is created and returned to the user’s browser.

Another example of a web OPAC wrapper is Scriblio (formerly called WPopac). Using the underlying framework of WordPress, Scriblio offers faceted browsing, tagging, and syndication feeds for the underlying Millennium WebOPAC. Scriblio is a project of Plymouth State University, supported in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Both SOPAC and Scriblio are available under open source licenses.

Web OPAC replacements are new systems that completely replace the existing web OPAC. Unlike wrappers (which get their bibliographic data in real-time from the underlying web OPAC), these replacements operate on sets of records that are extracted from the ILS or come from another source. (In some cases, these replacements still rely on the underlying web OPAC as a source of item status information such as checked out status and due date.) The first notable OPAC replacement was at North Carolina State University when its library installed and configured the Endeca software to provide a faceted browse to the library catalog. By itself, an Endeca OPAC display does not enable tagging, annotation, or user aggregation services such as recommendation engines.  Other similar web OPAC replacements are Encore from Innovative Interfaces³, Primo from Ex Libris and Aquabrowser from Medialab Solutions. Miami University’s experiments with the open source Apache SOLR and the exported records from their Millennium system also fall into this category. Worldcat Local is also a form of web OPAC replacement noting that the source of bibliographic records is the OCLC Worldcat database rather than the local ILS.

ILS replacements offer the biggest opportunity for enhanced user services, particularly by adopting one of the open source solutions now available. At this time, neither of the open source solutions (Evergreen and Koha) offers more than faceted search and browsing. Unlike the commercial systems, however, the source code of the system can be modified to add these functions, and the modifications shared with other users of the same system.

[Update 20071015T1624 : Corrections made -- and the text improved! -- based on Betsy Graham's comment. Thanks, Betsy!]

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.iii.com/mill/webopac.shtml to http://web.archive.org/web/20071015145500/http://iii.com/mill/webopac.shtml on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html to http://web.archive.org/web/20080328163000/http://www.iii.com/encore/main_index2.html on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.sirsidynix.com/Solutions/Products/portalsearch.php#content to http://web.archive.org/web/20071109170053/http://www.sirsidynix.com/Solutions/Products/portalsearch.php#content on January 28th, 2011.

Footnotes

1. Such a technique gets the information from the ILS using the existing web OPAC. Such schemes are generally fragile because changes to the underlying web OPAC can have detrimental affects on the content scraping process.
2. Blyberg, J. (2007). AADL.org Goes Social. blyberg.net. Retrieved October 12, 2007, from http://www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social/
3. As Betsy Graham, Vice President of Product Management at Innovative Interfaces, notes in the comments, the Encore will perform real-time queries to a Millennium ILS for bibliographic data, and in such cases the data extract is not needed.

This started out as a comment to a posting by Chris Coppola, president and co-founder of rSmart Group. The comment got longer and threaded with yesterday’s posting about the nature of BioMed Central, so I moved it to this posting on DLTJ. For those in the library community who are not familiar with rSmart, it provides commercial support for the Sakai collaboration and learning environment and the Kuali administrative systems suite. rSmart is somewhat equivalent to Equinox Software and LibLime in the library automation arena.

Aligning Clashing Values Under Open Source

we should be careful not to over generalize. There are clashing values between some businesses and the education community. Blackboard might even be the poster child for values that clash. But there are businesses out there that operate with the same collegial cooperation, and share the values of the education community. Indeed some are part of the education community.

He’s right, and I would propose that what makes rSmart (and Equinox and LibLime and other similar companies) different is a commitment to open source principles. The values of the business and the values of the academic institution are more closely aligned when the outcome is a better piece of open source software for the business and the academic institution. As rSmart thrives, so does the underlying open source platforms — and here is the key — whether or not consumers of that underlying platform are direct customers of the commercial support entities.

Aligning Clashing Values Under Open Access

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www2.library.yale.edu/movabletype/scilib/archive/2007/08/library_drops_b_1.html on January 19th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://coppola.rsmart.com/node/32 to http://coppola.rsmart.com/2007/08/14/educational-patents-open-access-journals-and-clashing-values/ on January 20th, 2011.