Agreed wholeheartedly with that.

Someone suggested the people behind this new effort should be convinced
to come on board with Dan's oss4lib.

Alternately, Dan could abandon the (as far as I can tell) not
particularly maintained oss4lib, and himself join the new effort.

Things, whether software or communities or organizations, 'fork' when
the original is not meeting someone's needs. shrug. I don't see it as a
discouraging thing that there is new energy behind a project to have
more "user" (rather than programmer) level collaboration on open source
software in libraries.  They probably didn't even know about oss4lib.
It's not exactly a thriving project. Rather than say "Oh, that's a good
idea, but only if you do it using the software that Dan has already set
up, whether or not you think that will meet your needs", I'd rather "we"
(Anyone working on oss4lib right now--and if there is no such people
this whole thing is moot, isn't it?) say "Great, welcome aboard, let's
figure out how you work together, feel free to use our tools if you
think they'll be helpful, as we progress let's think about whether to
merge our projects."

Jonathan

Kyle Banerjee wrote:
>> ..... I would hope that it would
>>  be a community that feels more welcoming to the librarians who usually hand
>>  off anything related to technology to "the people who are supposed to handle
>>  those kinds of things for us."
>>
>
> It concerns me that technology is seen as belonging to another
> discipline entirely despite the fact that libraries are extremely
> technology dependent. It is this dynamic which has led to a "shopping
> club" mentality presumes that the best solutions will come from the
> outside.
>
> Anything that encourages librarians to be more technology
> aware/capable is a good thing. Given that oss stuff has better
> prospects of success with larger rather than smaller communities, it
> seems like the better way to address the issue is find where people
> naturally gravitate, and then try to make that environment work for as
> many people as possible. That ultimately leads to better cross
> pollination of ideas.
>
> kyle
>
>

--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu