Entries from December 2006 ↓

I have decided to claim my blog on Technorati so I have to make a Technorati Profile. You can check it out if you want. And if you link to my blog, maybe I’ll get a rank higher than 311,699.

The Musings of an Anonymous Geek blog has an interesting post about using old hardware. I’m a big fan of old hardware, having a huge collection of Sun Sparc Stations that I can turn on in case I run out of heating oil. The Anonymous Geek has a good point about machines being thrown out well before their useful life is up. The machine I use everyday at home is only a old 1 Ghz machine and it browses the Web and reads e-mail just fine. Occasionally I think about getting a new 64 bit machine but I really can’t figure out why I need to since this one works just fine for what I do with it. I guess the thing is I’m not really into gaming and that seems to be the one thing more then anything else that pushes people to new machines. Still, I’m thinking about getting another machine just so I can have a spare one to install Evergreen and/or Koha on for some experimentation.

Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you chose to celebrate)!

Linux.com had a nice article about Evergreen, the open source ILS developed by Georgia Public Library Service. The article also made it to Slashdot. There really wasn’t much new in the article to people that have followed Evergreen, but it is still an interesting read even if you are familiar with the project, and a good read for anyone else that might be interested in an Open Integrated Library System (ILS). Some of the article highlights include Brad LaJeunesse quoted rattling a list of problems with their previous proprietary ILS that includes “Scalability. The ability to treat organization units as individual entities. Lack of granular permissions. Poor customer service. Lots more.” While not all of these issues impact all libraries the same way as they do a large consortium like Georgia PINES, many of them apply to all proprietary ILS systems at almost all libraries. Another problem with proprietary integrated library systems that I hear from all types of libraries with different systems is the lack of enhancements. This is something that PINES Program Director Julie Walker was quoted as addressing in the article. She stated that sometimes feature requests and bug fixes happen overnight: “We suggest something one day, and the guys fix it that night, and the next day we see it!” Try that with your proprietary ILS vendor! I don’t mean to knock all proprietary ILS vendors – I’m sure that some are trying their best – but this is something they just can not do for a number of reasons: 1) They don’t want to spend the resources implement these type of enhancements and feature requests, and 2) even if they did, they need to do more testing to make sure it works with the way other libraries do there work-flow. There are other reasons too, but you get the point. They just can’t afford to be as agile as an Open Source system is – especially one with in-house developers.

You may be asking how much does it cost for this agility and for a system that does what you want and not what some marketing department wants? Well, Georgia had to hire two additional developers (they went from a total of 2 to a total of 4). Compared to what they would have had to pay for a new system, (according to the article, $15 million up front and $5 million a year for maintenance) that is a drop in the bucket, even if the developers are getting paid $100,000 a year each. Heck even if they cost $250,000 each, and you count all four, they are saving $4 million a year. The whole Georgia PINES budget is only $1.6 million and that, I’m sure, covers more then the ILS. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more libraries jump onto Evergreen and to Koha (another Open Source ILS that is designed for smaller libraries).

PS: While reading the article and Slashdot comments, I happened around a posting on the open-ils blog that says the Georgia PINES folks are going to collaborate with the University of Windsor on an acquisitions module. This is great news as it is the one piece that Evergreen is missing. Hopefully they can get something working. The acquisitions module can be the most complicated module and due to poor design and interoperabillty with other budgeting systems in the library’s parent organization, can be the least effective. Hopefully the PINES/Windsor team can come up with a good acquisition system that can help alleviate this issue to some extent. If they do, Evergreen will have everything that the proprietary ILS programs have (and will probably do it all better, for less cost).

SirsiDynix must have felt left out of the dance at the library systems private equity firm party that is happening at Fransisco Partners, and has found its own partner in Vista Equity Partners. The only place I’ve seen any news about this is in Dan Scott’s Coffee|Code blog. He has some interesting speculation about what this will mean for SirsiDynix and their customers. It seems the press release is still a few days away. The details (at least to a non-SirsiDynix customer) are a little vague about how much Vista is investing in SirsiDynix and how it will effect SirsiDynix and its products seems still up in the air at this point. It is interesting to me that these private equity firms are investing in the library software market. Obviously they expect to see a profit in doing so, but I’m not sure where it will end up coming from.

I see that USAC has announced the schedules for their three national touring series. Besides the Manzinita show that I previously mentioned in this blog, nothing really stands out for me on the Silver Crown schedule.

The midget series schedule looks pretty strong and I see they have some more co-sanctioned shows with the POWRi Midget Series and the Badger Midgets. If you are looking to see a a midget race with a really good field of cars, going to one of these shows could be a winner. The two co-sanctioned shows at McCool Junction in Nebraska really peaks my interest. As some readers of this blog know, I have a goal of seeing a race in all fifty states and I haven’t seen one in Nebraska yet. What makes these two dates even more intriguing are that they are on a Monday and a Tuesday, leaving the weekend open to catch some races at other tracks (maybe in missing states Wyoming and Colorado). They are also just before the Bellville Nationals which might make for another possibility.

The sprint car series is where the big news for east coast fans are. They plan on having a 4 race eastern swing with 3 nights scheduled so far. They are Big Diamond Raceway (Wed., June 6), Grandview Speedway Thu., June 7), and Hagerstown Speedway (Sat., June 9) with a Friday night race still to be announced. My bet is that they are trying to work out a date with William’s Grove, but maybe it will end up somewhere else (New Egypt anyone?). Another date that peaks my interest is a August 14′th visit to Mineral Wells, WV’s West Virginia Motor Speedway. I’m still looking to see a race in West Virginia, so this might be a possibility if it ends up fitting into my schedule.

I usually don’t get too excited over a media’s choice for person of the year, invention of the year, event of the year, etc., but I really do find Time’s choice for the “Person(s) of the Year” quite interesting this time around. They chose “You.” More specifically, they chose people who participate in creating content on Web 2.0 applications such as Wikipedia and YouTube.com. Being that one of my main areas of scholarly research involves the use of Web 2.0 applications and web sites to libraries (and the greater information seeking world), I find this choice right up my alley. Posting information on blogs, MySpace, etc. gets a lot of bad wraps sometimes. Many of us have heard stories about Millenials who post too much information on these types of sites being turned down for a job, but their are also some good things that happen because of these types of things. I have heard of people getting promotions at work when their bosses came across their blogs and other writings about a topic that the company needed expertise in, but wasn’t aware that they already had an employee who was knowledgeable in a particular area. In the library blogging world, we have seen librarians such as Meredith Farkas living out her 9′th grade dream, in some part due to being able to demonstration her writing skills and insight on her “Information Wants to be Free” blog (Congratulation’s Meredith!). Too be sure not all is positive that happens in the Web 2.0 world, but it is far from all negative. AS the Time article states, “Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail.” However, the likely hood of it completely failing is pretty slim at this point. Sure, we will probably be talking about Web 6.0 at some point and the online world will be different down the road, but that is what makes all of this interesting.

I just read on the USAC web site that there will be an “open-wheel extravaganza to attend in February as Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix, Ariz. will host an inaugural USAC Tripleheader in Memory of Roger McCluskey the weekend of February 9-10.” On the card will be the USAC Silver Crown Championship Cars, National and Western Midgets and USAC/CRA Sprint Cars. While maybe not quite a return of the Copper Classic to Phoenix, it does have some of the same divisions and should be one heck of a weekend of racing. It might be worth making a return trip to Phoenix for this one if I can find a cheap enough flight. BTW: the race organizer will be Dennis Wood, who according to the press release orginized the first Copper Classic at Phoenix International Raceway.

In other USAC news, the Indiana Sprint Week schedule has been released (only it is a little longer then a week). It will have 9 races this year,. The schedule is:

2007 INDIANA SPRINT WEEK SCHEDULE

July 11-North Vernon/Twin Cities Raceway Park
July 12-Lawrenceburg/Lawrenceburg Speedway
July 13-Gas City/Gas City I-69 Speedway
July 14-Putnamville/Lincoln Park Speedway
July 15-Kokomo/Kokomo Speedway
July 18-Boswell/Kamp Motor Speedway
July 19-Terre Haute/Terre Haute Action Track
July 20-Bloomington/Bloomington Speedway
July 21-Haubstadt/Tri-State Speedway