Jason wrote:

>Note: We are a consortia of 249 public libraries on a centralized union
> catalog, with 7.8 million items, 1.1 million patrons, and a
> FY2003 circulation of 15
>million.  This has a
>dramatic impact on any technical solution we make use of.

<lots of good stuff snipped/>...

>We're considering in-house development of our own ILS (which would be
>open sourced),
>since there isn't a single vendor out there that meets all of our
>needs, and it is very irksome
?to be treated as a "minority customer" with needs so unique that they
>are not worth catering to.

Wow! This would be one whopping testimony to OSS if you pursue it, due to
the sheer scale of your system. Several of us have been on the ILS trail so
keep posting the results of your discussions. It might make a good basis
for a Mellon grant, see what happened with Chandler at <
http://blogs.osafoundation.org/mitch/000146.html>.

art