I support any effort to promote and educate open source in libraries.
I agree with Dan about getting more coverage.  I also agree with Karen
Coombs and Mark Jordan about making the connection. Both communities
are important and I hope there would be direct communication between
the two.  I don't know how, tho'. :-)

So, I hope the concern (which is also my concern) that Ross wrote
below on web4lib  can be avoided:

>  Instead, it looks like we'll have two communities and two mailing
>  lists.  Two communities, I note, that would have been completely
>  ignorant of each other if not for this mailing list thread.


I like Kyle Banerjee's idea here:
>  [...] 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.

and I would be curious how to find out where people would gravitate to.

OCLC's Webjunction has oss for library section
(http://webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=12678) and seems to be a
different community as well; mostly public libraries, it seems.  There
are probably similar initiatives on regional level as well.

And  then there are divisions in ALA that also talk about open source
in libraries.  They are  essentially talking about the same thing but
on different time slots and locations with different speakers.


ranti.

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