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Open versus proprietary in software and systems
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Open versus proprietary in software and systems
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
LESLIE: Welcome, everyone. We're pleased that you're taking the time to attend our session on open versus proprietary in software and systems at the NISO Plus conference in 2021. I want to start by introducing our four panelists today. Bohyun Kim is the Chief Technology Officer and an Associate Professor at the University of Rhode Island Libraries. She's the author of three books and has published many articles and given numerous invited and peer-reviewed presentations on emerging technologies and their impact on libraries.
LESLIE: She is a past president of LITA and serves on many advisory boards and committees, including the American Library Association, San Jose State University's School of Information, and the Rhode Island Library Association. Russell Palmer is the Assistant Director of the GALILEO Virtual Library Portal, an initiative of the University System of Georgia. GALILEO provides access to electronic resources to the State University, private colleges and universities, public schools, private K-12 schools, technical college, and public libraries.
LESLIE: A primary focus of his work is to help associated institutions get the most out of GALILEO by giving them strategies to integrate its resources into teaching and research. Erik Radio is a Metadata Librarian and an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. His research examines how metadata, data modeling, ontologies, and linked data intersect more broadly with semiotics, dialectics, and critical theory, and has published extensively on those topics.
LESLIE: Brooks Travis is the Information Technology Coordinator for the Missouri State University Library where he oversees technology policy, library systems implementation, web application development, and user support. He has extensive experience as a web developer with system and service integration across platforms. So welcome to our four panelists today. So I'm going to start off with a general question.
LESLIE: And I will start with Bohyun. Are there any projects that you have worked with that you want to highlight as we start off this panel?
BOHYUN KIM: Yeah, so I would like to actually use two browser extensions, LibX and Lean Library Library Access, as the examples of open source software and proprietary. So I'm going to actually share my screen so that I can have some visuals to show for folks. Let me see if it's working. Is it working? OK, excellent, so I'm going to just go over really quickly how these two browser extensions work, because there will be some people who are not familiar with it.
BOHYUN KIM: So LibX is an open source project started at Virginia Tech in 2005, and the design has not changed much since it started. And it was maintained for about 13 years, and it recently went defunct in 2018. So I think it's a good example of OSS that we're going to talk about today. So this is the LibX website, and when a user clicks the extension icon, like you see here, it shows this pop-up, which includes many tools and links.
BOHYUN KIM: So the search is available right here. It includes lots of systems that each individual library can set up. As long as it supports the standard HTTP GET method, you can pretty much configure anything here-- so library catalog, databases, lists, e-journals, DOI, PMID-- all of these features are available. So this is an example of PMID search, and it also had this section in which a library, each individual library, can set up a group of individual links that are relevant to research while the researcher is browsing the web.
BOHYUN KIM: So that is a handy thing for people, and this is just the developer section, where you can see some H related information, and each addition is configured by individual libraries and maintained. But since it's an open source project, obviously, people can look at other additions to source code. They can copy, adapt, change, and then distribute it.
BOHYUN KIM: So that's LibX, and the proprietary software example that I'm going to use today is Lean Library. It's a library access browser extension. So this is not open source project. This is a proprietary [INAUDIBLE].. The product, originally it started at Utrecht University Library in 2014, I think, and then it eventually became a proprietary product and was acquired by SAGE in 2018.
BOHYUN KIM: So this is their website that you can see here. So it shows up as a button in a web browser just like LibX, but unlike LibX, it does not activate when you click the icon. That's mostly how browser extensions work, but Lean Library scans the web page a user is in, and it only gets activated automatically, without any user intervention, when it detects a DOI, or ISBN, or ISSN-- the permanent identifiers.
BOHYUN KIM: In addition Library Access also connects with the library. So open your link resolver. It also imports the library's easy proxy config file, and we can talk about that later. So it will pop up this sort of get access button when it is applicable to the user's institution that the user selected in the beginning. So here are some examples of that happening.
BOHYUN KIM: If nothing's happening-- oh, and this one is open access. So Lean Library, universal LibraryAnywhere, has an option to connect to the APIs of Unpaywall and the core to detect open access version if the institution chooses to do so. And if none of that is possible, then it can be set up to redirect users to ILL service of the library. And it also has a third module called the library access.
BOHYUN KIM: So for individual websites, if a library chooses to do so, they can set up this custom message for a site to give specific instructions to gain access for users. So that's pretty much how it works. So hopefully, these visuals will give you some idea of how these two browser extensions work. Great. Thank you, Bohyun. Russell?
BOHYUN KIM:
RUSSELL PALMER: For my part, I would just say that we shared a very similar experience, and we're still working through it, at GALILEO. We had implemented WebEx for all of our GALILEO Portal subscribers, and it was very well-loved across the board, even by our K-12 teachers and media specialists, because of its ability to go to a web page, like a Wikipedia page, and activate those links with an ISBN link and get people the full text that way.
RUSSELL PALMER: So it was a very powerful tool, and when it fell out, it was difficult. Some of the-- so we're actually exploring Lean Library now as a proprietary possibility for replacing that functionality which we enjoyed, but we're also beginning to look at the open environment a lot more to see what options are available and what's out there. As a development team, the GALILEO development team, in terms of projects that I'll highlight just in brief and expand upon later, we are currently implementing ArchiveSpace for some of our public libraries and some of our academic institutions.
RUSSELL PALMER: We're providing that as a hosted service, and we're also working with our public libraries to implement, SimplyE, the e-book aggregator piece. So we're actually taking on the role of a hosted services provider, in some respects, for our libraries-- which is an interesting aspect of all the possibilities with open source versus proprietary. But this resonates well with me, Bohyun, and I appreciate you sharing it, because it's a learning experience for us as well, to see what directions other libraries are taking once those open tools expire or go away-- which I know we'll talk more about later.
LESLIE: Great. Thank you, Russell. Erik?
ERIK RADIO: Thanks, Leslie. This has been really great, hearing these examples so far. My particular library at University of Colorado Boulder has really increasingly been seeing the advantages of going with open source solutions for a number of digital initiatives that we've been undertaking, and probably one of the more recent ones has been the GeoBlacklight repository for geospatial data sets, which has been a really positive experience for us for a couple of reasons-- one of which is that it's been really easy to build on tools that link up to it because it is open.
ERIK RADIO: So we've built a Data Loader that we can customize when we need to as we need to, as data sets from different agencies vary, and the nature of how that data is structured-- quite drastically, sometimes. And so that flexibility has been a really great affordance for us. But further, I would also say that just like the participatory element of that technology has been really positive, and that there's a real sense of immediacy for getting involved with that community, sharing ideas, suggesting ideas, and it's been a really open and pleasant experience so far with us going through that, I think that that's indicative of a really positive trend for, at least, my library in particular.
ERIK RADIO:
LESLIE: Given that I used to work at UVA, for their libraries, I'm really excited to hear that from you. Brooks, what would you like to add?
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, our biggest example at Missouri State has been we implemented-- the first North American Library to implement Folio as our primary library services platform last June. And that has been a big change. We had been in a consortium with a hosted commercial system, shared hosted commercial system, for 20 years. And made that jump over, again echoing-- one of the reasons was the community involvement, the ability to drive and guide the development of the project, the fully-open API nature of the system was something that was really attractive to us.
BROOKS TRAVIS: And I'm sure we'll discuss that a little bit later. But that's a highlight for what we're doing. We've looked at Lean Library and Instant IOL, the new project from IUPUI, and right now, we're implementing LibKey solution for that. That's mostly-- we selected that for expediency's purpose, expediency's sake right now. One major open source project implementation at a time, I think, as we build capacity internally for that.
BROOKS TRAVIS: It's a new thing for both the libraries and our University as a whole.
LESLIE: That's great. I don't think any of us ever get the option to do one project at a time, so that's great. So the first question that I want to ask all of you-- what are the benefits of open systems? Russell?
BOHYUN KIM: [INAUDIBLE]
RUSSELL PALMER: I can start there. And just to build on a couple of things that Erik and Brook shared that transition well into this, we're typically interested in ways that we, in some cases, can contribute code-- I think we're talking about the community aspects of this, Erik-- when we're not even necessarily implementing that product yet. There's lots of opportunities there. We may implement things on a limited basis.
RUSSELL PALMER: There may be part and parcel of Folio that we implement down the road, even if we don't go in that direction. So it's great. I love that idea of the sense of community and the resource sharing. I think that's such a great area, because I feel like a lot of the proprietary products with resource sharing have dropped the ball in some way or the other, and we're taking a long look right now at Project ReShare at GALILEO to see what we think about that and what directions that could take us in.
RUSSELL PALMER: But in any case, as a consortium, we're just beginning, I think, to realize the potential of open systems, because as a consortium, you have so much stuff to manage, consistency is really important. And that's why interoperability is so key for us. We have all these divergent systems, and we need them to be as healthy and as interoperable as possible.
RUSSELL PALMER: And we certainly have a healthy understanding of the challenges that go with open source, but we also see the value that our colleagues at the Georgia Public Library Service-- our sister organization-- have realized with their PINES Evergreen ILS system. And that's been really powerful for them and offered them a lot of flexibility. So while open systems require coding to a standard and community approval, change can-- in my mind, it happens a lot more quickly.
RUSSELL PALMER: But you also have the ability to ignore code you don't want to use, or to fork code and create functionality others may not want. It creates an amazing degree of flexibility that just isn't found in traditional systems where you wait, and sometimes you wait for people to vote up or vote down certain enhancements. You're in a lot more control of things-- again, with that caveat, if you have really good developers.
RUSSELL PALMER: So that's where we are with this. Where we're exploring a lot of open source opportunities, with the idea that some of the failings of proprietary systems in terms of interoperability can be addressed by open systems, either in part or in parcel.
ERIK RADIO: Yeah, and I would second a lot of what Russell said-- that that customizability to fit specific workflows and scenarios is really key to open source systems. Specifically because we do have all these tasks in common between libraries, but there are idiosyncrasies to every institution that are unique to specific consortias and practices that are historical. But one other thing, too, that I think that is a benefit is that there really is transparency into how a system is built. And I think that as privacy advocates, we really want to know, what is happening to the data when it goes into a system?
ERIK RADIO: What is happening to it? Where is it getting stored? How is it getting stored? What's happening to it on the backend? And I think that these open source systems really allow you to have an open lens onto how those services get enacted in a very concrete way.
BOHYUN KIM: Yeah, and I would add that in addition to the flexibility of customization and the transparency of the source code, I think open source software also allows the libraries to develop a product that has a coherent feature set and embed the vision of the service. So we don't always see a proprietary product to address that. You have certain features, but not always, with the jibe with the others.
BOHYUN KIM: Sometimes, we have product that works in a certain way, but it does not support other things that we think are really important. And LibX is a good example of that. It was widely popular, I believe, not only because it was open source and free to use and all that stuff, but in addition, I think the way it was created it reflected the ideas of the librarians in the front.
BOHYUN KIM: They knew what was needed and how users would use this. And in addition, you also had this element of putting users in an active role as a researcher. So it was reflected in the design of the system that the users, as they used of this tool, they would develop these research skills along the way. So that allowed this LibX to be a pedagogical tool in a lot of library instruction. And we are probably not going to see something like that in proprietary software, as you can see in Lean Libraries, like Library Access, and other things.
BOHYUN KIM: So I think open source software provides this opportunity for libraries to be able to embed their own vision for the future. So I think that's a really plus for open source software. And one more thing that I would like to add is also, open source software, obviously, provides an alternative to proprietary products in the market. So when LibX went defunct, the market got really excited. And then, we are now seeing a lot of alternatives.
BOHYUN KIM: But during the 10 years or so when LibX was a de facto library extension, we have not seen any of those products. So that's something to think about. And now that it's defunct, library is caught off guard, so now we are rushing to buy something. It's not doing exactly the right thing, and now we are going to kind of have to influence those products.
BOHYUN KIM: But it may not actually do the things that we want. So that's something to think about when we lose an open source project that we depend on-- what's going to happen?
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, I know the biggest things with us with getting involved in Folio as our first big open source project adoption, we had used open source tools in the past for different things, but having that ability to influence and get involved in the community and steer that, especially right now in this early stage in the project, was critical for us. But one other thing I want to address, it's not just necessarily with open source projects, but open systems in general, even proprietary systems that provide open APIs, APIs that can be addressed to perform the functions that the system is capable of so that you can build custom interfaces and tools, is also important for us.
BROOKS TRAVIS: And that was one of the things that drove us in the direction of Folio, was our previous systems, while they had APIs, they weren't fully-featured. So we weren't able to perform all the functions for automation and things like that we wanted to be able to build tools and workflows within our organization to do. So that's, I think, the real benefit for us o open source and even open proprietary systems that have-- where the APIs are first-class citizens on the platform is really important.
LESLIE: So I'd actually love to follow up with that topic that you brought up for everybody. So what are the integration and interoperability concerns when you're considering proprietary versus open systems, and all of our infrastructures are now a mix of those?
RUSSELL PALMER: Sure, I can speak to that first, if that's OK. To be honest-- and this sounds really mean and vicious, and it's not really intended as such-- but we love our vendors, and we work with them on a day-to-day basis to keep all of this stuff up and running. But one of the most prevalent problems for us when it comes to interoperability in proprietary systems is vendor competition.
RUSSELL PALMER: Vendors will, for example, exclude key components from interoperability infrastructure because they sell a competing component. And we've also had vendors ask us to stop using certain APIs to pull our own data that we created from one environment to the other. And that, to me, diminishes the spirit of openness, even in the proprietary world, when you get your hand slapped a little bit.
RUSSELL PALMER: Our end goal is to serve the user, and when restrictions like this come about from infighting, we're not able to provide the best user experience. Now, a lot of vendors do communicate about this and work through these issues, but I think it will continue to grow as a concern. I've noticed a lot of vendors lately are creating proprietary authentication platforms, and we're implementing OpenAthens.
RUSSELL PALMER: And that becomes a challenge for us to get around. With open systems, our biggest consideration is often the maturity of an open product when it comes to meeting the needs of library staff and users when we're implementing something for so many end users. Anyone, any resident of our state, might use GALILEO. So always beta is a lovely concept that we've seen both in the proprietary environment, probably more in the open environment.
RUSSELL PALMER: But if an open system hasn't matured to minimum viable product status by our consortial standard, it creates interesting-- I would say not insurmountable, but interesting challenges for us from an implementation and development perspective. So those are the big things that we think about quite a lot on a day-to-day basis as we're looking at moving a variety of different types of systems forward.
RUSSELL PALMER:
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, for us, it's like how much of the functionality of the proprietary system is exposed through the public API interfaces, like I mentioned earlier-- particularly RESTful APIs? And are there additional costs involved in using them, or are they, again, a first-class citizen on the platform? What data interchange interoperability standards are supported by both types of systems, the open and the proprietary?
BROOKS TRAVIS: And with the proprietary systems, are there any license or other business limitations, like Russell mentioned, on what systems can connect with their products, even using standards? One thing in particular, that's we're Tipasa. We use Tipasa for our ILL fulfillment system, and its [INAUDIBLE] standard integration is only built for Alma right now.
BROOKS TRAVIS: So it's like, OK, it's [INAUDIBLE] two. Why does it only work with Alma? That kind of thing. So those are the biggest considerations on our side, as far as proprietary versus open.
BOHYUN KIM: Yeah, I can say a few things related to LibX and Lean Library Library Access regarding the integration and interoperability concerns. I think in assessing any type of systems or tools, I think people need to ask if the integration makes sense. So we tend to think that, OK, this product's integrated with this, and that, and that, and that. The more it integrates, the better-- which is not always the case.
BOHYUN KIM: So I think people need to understand that as the systems and tools get more modular, the interoperability and integration, I think the sources and methods of those things are achieved can vary. So it makes certain connections more fragile, certain things more reliable, depending on what standards are used or not used. So I think being aware of that is really important, and also whether a system or tools have a coherent feature set.
BOHYUN KIM: So sometimes I see these in proprietary software, that there is a certain integration. OK, works, but it is very heavy-handed. It's like works by screen-scraping or some kind of ad hoc method to grab things. So it's really heavy-handed, and then, I don't even know whether that feature is really that great, that it's worthwhile to really have it. So you have this sort of vulnerability to the system.
BOHYUN KIM: On the other hand, it doesn't really add a lot to user experience. So thinking about those interoperability and integration concerns, I think sometimes, open source software has a better feedback loop if the community responds it more responsibly. Then, their product tends to go wherever they think there is a profit. So the directions are very different right, and how their dynamics is going to go, but I think those are some of the things that people need to be aware of.
BOHYUN KIM: So as a specific example, Lean Library's library access imports each institution's easy proxy config file, because it includes all the domains of databases that a library subscribes to. But as you know, it's not intended to be a list of subscription domains for the library. It's not made for that purpose, but they use it as an approximation in order to make the feature of detecting a subscription database the user navigated to.
BOHYUN KIM: So this had some problems, and also, when you think about it, this major feature requires, at the back end, what kind of labor it requires-- overtime, ongoing maintenance, the cleanup. When you use a non-standard integration, what's, down the road, the consequences? Things like that. So two of the things that I would point out as something to consider for libraries when they look at simply the feature sets, whether there are lots of integrations, there are lots of interoperability, not all of them are desirable or worthwhile.
BOHYUN KIM: Some of them are more important. Some of them are not. Some of them are actually reliable and durable. Some of them are fragile, and you might have problems.
ERIK RADIO: Yeah, and I would agree with everything my colleagues have said here, and just add that there's enough challenges in getting data to be read by another system, just in terms of how that data is structured and formatted. And so-- and that's even with open APIs that are fully-featured. There's enough challenges there, too. And so when there is that competitiveness that I believe Russell mentioned that creates barriers to that, it creates a tension that unfortunately, the users are the ones that end up holding that, and we have to mediate that for them, which also creates additional labor that we end up kind of having to hold on for for them.
ERIK RADIO: And so I think that that's just not-- I think that open source things really can help mitigate that in very concrete ways.
LESLIE: So are there any specific situations that you've encountered in your work where one approach is preferable to the other-- proprietary versus open source or open systems?
ERIK RADIO: I can answer that one, if that's OK. I think that in my opinion, open systems are great for what I would call operational work, or work that forms the backbone of an organization that has a history in it. So a good example would be cataloging workflows or acquisitions workflows. There really is just a lot of desire to be able to control how that data gets created and also shared.
ERIK RADIO: And sometimes, we want to do new things with it as well. And when there's barriers to getting at our data, that creates a tension that's difficult to resolve. On the flip side, I would say that proprietary systems also can be really great when you want to spin up something really fast and you don't have, necessarily, the technical support to give that a project. Because open systems often require additional resources in terms of technical support that aren't always available, and I think that proprietary systems can be an effective solution for when you want to, maybe, try out a new service or rapidly spin something up.
ERIK RADIO:
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE]..
ERIK RADIO: Go ahead, I'm sorry.
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, I would echo a lot of that. I don't think there's necessarily a one-size-fits-all answer to that question. One thing that I have been just always considered here on the open source side is that for a lot of the major open source projects, there are somewhat robust solutions provider-- they provide hosting. They provide support, migration, and implementation services for those projects and for those products that can help bridge that gap between the proprietary solutions and the open source solutions without having to place a lot of demands on your organization.
RUSSELL PALMER: And that echoes one of the thoughts that I wanted to share on this, which is, in our approach, I think we're so used to all the bells and whistles of proprietary systems, and how they're marketed, and how they're approached, I think sometimes we forget that open might be-- it might not be as good, but it can be good enough to address a lot of specific needs.
RUSSELL PALMER: I'll speak to open again, in this case, as a specific example of the decision we made. Again, we worked very closely with our sister organization, the Georgia Public Library Service. We're both under the hat of the Board of Regents. And we worked with them to host SimplyE. And SimplyE is an e-book aggregation platform which you can use to bring lots of different e-book content together in one place from multiple publishers.
RUSSELL PALMER: And it's searchable. It creates lists. It manages check-in and check-out for ebooks all in one place. We didn't see a software or a product in the proprietary market that, first of all, did that and did it well, and we also considered hosted versus not hosted. With GPLS, they were looking at a hosted service for this, and we were able to save them a lot of money with that.
RUSSELL PALMER: But another consideration is certainly cost. While we realized initial savings for that, it's interesting, when you integrate an open source product into the mix, costs aren't always evident immediately. For example, with SimplyE, we still are saving a lot of money over a hosted service, but at the same time, we're watching various processes that we honestly don't fully understand yet in the SimplyE environment raising our AWS, our Amazon Services, where we have a lot of this service hosted.
RUSSELL PALMER: Those costs are slowly climbing, so you have to keep an eye on that. So I think cost is certainly a consideration, but again, compared to competing products in the vendor market, having the service hosted, the savings is still pretty enormous in the end. So I think cost is certainly another consideration that we think about.
BOHYUN KIM: Yes, I would like to talk about the cost a little bit of open source software and proprietary, because this comes up a lot. And there is this major trend in which like libraries tend to see the biggest benefit of open source software as that it's free to use. And I think that's good. Obviously, open source product, it can be a cost savings measure for libraries, particularly when we all deal with flat budget or decreasing budget year after year.
BOHYUN KIM: But seeing that as the primary reason to implement and adapt to open source product is actually a misuse. So I think it's really important for libraries to understand that. That's great that you can use this for free for now, even though there are lots of other issues like that comes with-- that you need to have staff resources and support, you need to have certain infrastructure in your institution to be able to fully customize and implement all that.
BOHYUN KIM: But still, I think having that sort of narrow, short-term view on open source software, I think that that's detrimental to the library community as a whole. So I would really like to emphasize that, because personally, I think it's really bad. And also, one more thing that I would like to point out is-- so folks have discussed why open source software could be preferred. Sometimes, the proprietary software is more advantageous.
BOHYUN KIM: It's turnkey, it's faster, it might be cheaper for smaller institutions with a small FTE and so on. A lot of times, institutions really hesitate to adopt open source software because they are worried about the longevity of the project, the sustainability of the project. They are like, Oh, there's no clear governance model. There's no business model.
BOHYUN KIM: I don't know whether it's going to be around, et cetera, et cetera. There is no reliable support for the product, and we use this for the daily operation. So all of this is not available. We're going to just go with, I don't know, some product, right? But the thing is, open source software needs to be sustained by the community that it benefits.
BOHYUN KIM: So it's like by saying that, libraries are creating a catch-22. They are responsible to create a business model, sustain the products that actually are integral to library community if we want lots of product that is going to be free from commerce or interest and reflect our values more closely. So I just see this all the time in the discussion of our libraries, of proprietary product and open source softwares.
BOHYUN KIM: So I really wanted to talk about that. And like I think Russell or someone mentioned that the cost breakdown, the return on investment of open source software and proprietary ones, is not straightforward. You might seem to save some money at a certain point by open or proprietary, but down the road, the dynamic changes. So I would really like people and the libraries think more deeply and over a long term how these things would turn out, and that it has an impact on the collective future of the library community as a whole, depending on what path we take.
RUSSELL PALMER: Yeah, I have just an answer to that since I commented on cost specifically. You're absolutely right. And using two examples, I just want to talk about cost considerations and backtrack on the SimplyE piece a bit. Ultimately, that is one where we've been very fortunate to realize some savings. But you're absolutely right-- the savings that we realized at first, when you talk about hosting costs and other things, and the cost of development and time to maintain that product, it begins to balance out.
RUSSELL PALMER: And there isn't always even a break-even in the open source environment, you're absolutely right. I would say as another example, we are exploring right now, as I mentioned, Project ReShare, the possibilities there, and we're very early on in our consideration of that. But there is absolutely no way that we would realize any cost savings with that in any kind of immediate way as we begin that exploration.
RUSSELL PALMER: But we would do it, as you mentioned, because it's the right thing to do if we can build from something that takes a lot of energy and development at first, but then, eventually, that moves to something that's a little bit more sustainable. And then, you're absolutely right, I think the third consideration with that, too, that you hit on really nicely, Bohyun, is community. I think as you're considering open source products, looking at that community, looking at the strength and the stability of that community, I think also looking at when vendors are actually involved and engaged with that community-- for example, in the Folio community, I feel like that, those are always good signs of a strong open source community that it's worthwhile to be involved with.
RUSSELL PALMER: So I think looking for those, those clues to the better open source solutions, is one way to approach it as well. But thank you for that. I think that was really insightful in terms of cost, because you're absolutely right. There's the famous quote-- I don't remember who said it initially- but the "free as in kittens" quote which I always like to tell people when it comes to open source.
LESLIE: Oh, yeah, we've all been there, as the free as in kittens situation, for sure. So in answering that question, a lot of you raised the issue of support for the product, or system, or tool that you're working with. And this really comes to mind, Bohyun, because you were talking about LibX, which went away, and then a vendor came into the market. And so I want to ask, what do you do when support or an entire project goes away?
LESLIE: But I'm also curious, Bohyun, if you could actually say why you think another open source project didn't come into that market space, and instead, a vendor, proprietary system, or several of those did? And then, anyone else, please weigh in on what you've had to do when something has suddenly disappeared from your infrastructure.
BOHYUN KIM: Yeah, sure. So I think the whole impetus behind the talking about this actually came because recently in my workplace, we both have Lean Library, Universal Library Access browser extension. And I have worked with LibX throughout the entire life span. So it's just ignited in me, why this is happening in the library community? So there are lots of open source of products in the world that comes and goes, and it is a completely natural.
BOHYUN KIM: You don't expect them to be around all the time. But in the case of LibX, it's really interesting, because this piece of software had been so well-received for over a decade. And people loved it and used it at libraries all around the word, adopted it. There are numerous editions that have been made. It was widely successful. And at the same time, over more than 10 years, libraries as a collective failed to come up with a longer-term plan for sustainability and longevity of the product.
BOHYUN KIM: It just stayed at Virginia Tech, and it's just not possible for a small number of people to go over the source code over and over over decades, considering how often the browser changes, right? And even in spite of all that, we haven't acted. And I'm not blaming any particular library or people, because I have an active user, and I haven't really found out any way to support it myself, right? So it goes to libraries and organizations, how and why they failed to act in time before this happened?
BOHYUN KIM: At the same time, libraries staff who have been also using this actively. There was a user community of maintainers who had been creating these editions and then updating and all that stuff. So there was communication there, but we also failed to organize ourselves to find a systematic way to contribute updated codes or provide the impetus to move forward.
BOHYUN KIM: So there was failure at multiple levels, and now it came down to, at the end of the day, after 13 years, it just went defunct. So you will still see on the web a lot of libraries had just simply ignored it and said, oh, our LibX is no longer available because of the prospect went defunct. We are looking for alternatives. Some big libraries went out and just bought products, that is whatever available, which it doesn't do anymore.
BOHYUN KIM: So I think it's just really insightful to think about. So a lot of times, when something like this happens, people tend to think, like, OK, so what's available now to replace it? What's the best among the available, right? I think that's a very short-term thinking. Like, why this has happened? Libraries hadn't reflected enough about something like this.
BOHYUN KIM: We just failed to act in time, and now we have lost a very viable and valuable alternative. When you lose an open source project that has been successful, and when you lose it, you don't lose your just one opportunity. You also lose a lot of efforts that went into designing the product, a lot of features that's never going to be replicated in commercial products.
BOHYUN KIM: They had some really innovative projects like magic linking and things like that I think is absolutely fabulous. It's probably not going to be replicated in other projects. So do libraries have a stake in this? I believe we do. I'm not saying that commercial products cannot be the same as LibX. It may be.
BOHYUN KIM: But what I am thinking is that libraries have a particular stake in having alternative models of how we envision certain tools and services that we want to have our voices closely reflected. And a commercial product is not going to be always give us that. So when open source project goes away, what we lose is just not one tool, like all the design, and philosophy, and ideas that we had behind that goes away, and it might never be recovered in time.
BOHYUN KIM: And I think that's something that is very devastating to the entire library community.
RUSSELL PALMER: That was very well said, and I would say, just to add to that, I think it's requiring somewhat of a culture change in libraries and information organizations so that we begin to think about this. I will fully admit, Bohyun, when LibX went away, I was fairly clueless at the time. Now I would have a very different approach to what we did, because we've changed the dynamic of our development group.
RUSSELL PALMER: We've moved to Agile Development, and we've started contributing to open source projects more now. We're more aware as an organization, and that has really helped. Now, if that had happened in 2020 instead of 2018, I would have gone to our development group and said, hey, is there something that we could do to take this code on, to help Virginia Tech to begin to make, perhaps, this a sustainable product?
RUSSELL PALMER: Or I would have seen, when we started to send support requests in 2016 in 2017, and no fault of Virginia Tech's-- as you mentioned, they're stretched thin maintaining this-- we noticed that it was taking a week or two to get a response if we asked them, those are clues that I would be much more aware of now and have a greater sense of community about now that we've taken on doing more and thinking more about open source.
RUSSELL PALMER: So I think there's some degree of culture change that has to happen in information organizations to get people thinking in that way. But I really appreciated your comments here. That was great.
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, I agree, that was really great. I don't have a whole lot to add to that. It's--
ERIK RADIO: Yeah, great. That was all really great. With this question, what happens when a project goes away, I mean, I think it's also an aspect of remembering that no system really is forever, but the ways we think about our work and the critical operations that we need to carry out have a fairly long shelf life. And so I think that what we learn about a given workflow in light of an open source project can help us iterate on the standards that go into building those ecosystems to exist at all, but there also is that deflationary effect when an open source project diminishes, because they do take a lot of labor to steer and develop, and it's frustrating when it doesn't materialize or, sometimes, it just disintegrates.
ERIK RADIO: But looking forward, maybe, just optimistically, I think that it's important to remember that you can take those pieces that did work in those projects and write out their open source, and you can concretize those into meaningful operations and future systems, too, that you want to see replicated in the next open system, or as a means of driving proprietary options towards more open affordances, too. But the bottom line is that scalability question-- is, at what point does maintenance become too big for one place, and what are the mechanisms at that point to really get a broader community support towards the maintenance work, which often goes unnoticed for a lot of projects?
ERIK RADIO:
RUSSELL PALMER: That's a really good point, too. The fortunate thing now is, I think, in the era of GitHub and shared code repositories, you're right-- we do still have the basis of the product and the code available to us to take a look at, to examine, to see if it can be upgraded, or changed, or integrated into something else. That's a great point, Erik.
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, that ability to always take that forked code-- or take it as long as you comply with the license terms-- and use that in another way is one of the great options of open source. Or when proprietary-- because I mean, proprietary systems go defunct all the time, too. Or the company that developed them develops a new product they want you to pay more money for, and so they just ratchet up that support cost to you over time.
BROOKS TRAVIS: It's what a lot of Voyager libraries that are planning to move to Folio are seeing, where their support costs, the support contracts for Voyager go up, and up, and up every year, and they're like, want to get off that train.
RUSSELL PALMER: And that's certainly driving a lot of the work that we're doing right now. As an Alma/Primo library, we're certainly reviewing and evaluating the whole environment as we approach looking at the ILS in the future.
LESLIE: So we're down to our last couple of minutes, but I want to get in one final question with some brief answers. A lot of you mentioned standards in your answers, when we're talking about APIs or RESTful services. So what is the role for standards and standards organizations like NISO in the open source development and implementation realm?
BROOKS TRAVIS: So I can start that one. For me, standards provide a framework for building the integration and migration points for open source systems to talk to both other open source systems and proprietary products while still allowing the flexibility for implementing the user-facing interfaces in ways that are differentiated and competitive, while giving flexibility to customers or the implementers to select the tools that work best for their situation.
BROOKS TRAVIS: To me, that's really the benefit of having standards in these things for interoperability.
ERIK RADIO: Yeah, I would agree with that aspect of competition, because I think when there is a shared framework or protocols, it creates a space for there to be experimentation around similar services without having to be in total conflict with a different approach entirely. And so I think that by having consistent underlying data models or exchange models, it allows for that level of, yeah, just competition to really flourish.
ERIK RADIO: And I would say that with standards, thinking about that, platforms do decline, but standards let us move forward without having to rethink an entire approach, and it makes this easier to envision futures we want to go in and how certain technologies can get us there without compromising unnecessary operations for it.
BOHYUN KIM: Yeah, I think standards are beneficial for both open source products as well as a proprietary, but I think it benefits more for open source software. Because if you are a developer, obviously, it's a lot easier to just work with the standards to make your product work, rather than writing code that would take care of multiple ad hoc scenarios. So standards and the existence of robust standards helps the development of open source products.
BOHYUN KIM: And also, from the receiving end of open source products, if open source software is built based upon standards, it functions more reliably. It's more durable. So it is easier for libraries, for example, to adopt it. So I think it works both ways. In the case of vendor products, I think it's important for libraries to understand that there are some competing incentives for vendors to implement the standards.
BOHYUN KIM: They would usually do that if libraries really pushed for it. Sometimes, it takes some time. Vendors also have a vested interest to push their suite of products. So they will definitely emphasize and invest more on making their suite work better and closely and less so with other products. This is the vendor lock-in that we talk about a lot. So there is a disparity in how much benefits standards we will bring to open source versus proprietary.
BOHYUN KIM: So having that in mind, I think, will help libraries in assessing what solutions would work best for them.
RUSSELL PALMER: And I would echo that. That's almost exactly the tone of what I had written in my notes for that question. [LAUGHS] But I just would add to that, I think that with standards in mind, I think vendors, libraries, information organizations, we have to work with the end user in mind, because that's ultimately who the standards benefit. It gives them the item that they want. It gives them access to the journal article they need.
RUSSELL PALMER: And I think that's a really important aspect of the work that standards organizations need to do.
LESLIE: Great. Well, I really want to thank all of our panelists today for their really thoughtful answers to these questions and conversation with each other. And we hope that you enjoyed this and that you are looking forward to participating in the rest of the NISO Plus conference. Thank you very much. [MUSIC PLAYING]
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LESLIE: Welcome, everyone. We're pleased that you're taking the time to attend our session on open versus proprietary in software and systems at the NISO Plus conference in 2021. I want to start by introducing our four panelists today. Bohyun Kim is the Chief Technology Officer and an Associate Professor at the University of Rhode Island Libraries. She's the author of three books and has published many articles and given numerous invited and peer-reviewed presentations on emerging technologies and their impact on libraries.
LESLIE: She is a past president of LITA and serves on many advisory boards and committees, including the American Library Association, San Jose State University's School of Information, and the Rhode Island Library Association. Russell Palmer is the Assistant Director of the GALILEO Virtual Library Portal, an initiative of the University System of Georgia. GALILEO provides access to electronic resources to the State University, private colleges and universities, public schools, private K-12 schools, technical college, and public libraries.
LESLIE: A primary focus of his work is to help associated institutions get the most out of GALILEO by giving them strategies to integrate its resources into teaching and research. Erik Radio is a Metadata Librarian and an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. His research examines how metadata, data modeling, ontologies, and linked data intersect more broadly with semiotics, dialectics, and critical theory, and has published extensively on those topics.
LESLIE: Brooks Travis is the Information Technology Coordinator for the Missouri State University Library where he oversees technology policy, library systems implementation, web application development, and user support. He has extensive experience as a web developer with system and service integration across platforms. So welcome to our four panelists today. So I'm going to start off with a general question.
LESLIE: And I will start with Bohyun. Are there any projects that you have worked with that you want to highlight as we start off this panel?
BOHYUN KIM: Yeah, so I would like to actually use two browser extensions, LibX and Lean Library Library Access, as the examples of open source software and proprietary. So I'm going to actually share my screen so that I can have some visuals to show for folks. Let me see if it's working. Is it working? OK, excellent, so I'm going to just go over really quickly how these two browser extensions work, because there will be some people who are not familiar with it.
BOHYUN KIM: So LibX is an open source project started at Virginia Tech in 2005, and the design has not changed much since it started. And it was maintained for about 13 years, and it recently went defunct in 2018. So I think it's a good example of OSS that we're going to talk about today. So this is the LibX website, and when a user clicks the extension icon, like you see here, it shows this pop-up, which includes many tools and links.
BOHYUN KIM: So the search is available right here. It includes lots of systems that each individual library can set up. As long as it supports the standard HTTP GET method, you can pretty much configure anything here-- so library catalog, databases, lists, e-journals, DOI, PMID-- all of these features are available. So this is an example of PMID search, and it also had this section in which a library, each individual library, can set up a group of individual links that are relevant to research while the researcher is browsing the web.
BOHYUN KIM: So that is a handy thing for people, and this is just the developer section, where you can see some H related information, and each addition is configured by individual libraries and maintained. But since it's an open source project, obviously, people can look at other additions to source code. They can copy, adapt, change, and then distribute it.
BOHYUN KIM: So that's LibX, and the proprietary software example that I'm going to use today is Lean Library. It's a library access browser extension. So this is not open source project. This is a proprietary [INAUDIBLE].. The product, originally it started at Utrecht University Library in 2014, I think, and then it eventually became a proprietary product and was acquired by SAGE in 2018.
BOHYUN KIM: So this is their website that you can see here. So it shows up as a button in a web browser just like LibX, but unlike LibX, it does not activate when you click the icon. That's mostly how browser extensions work, but Lean Library scans the web page a user is in, and it only gets activated automatically, without any user intervention, when it detects a DOI, or ISBN, or ISSN-- the permanent identifiers.
BOHYUN KIM: In addition Library Access also connects with the library. So open your link resolver. It also imports the library's easy proxy config file, and we can talk about that later. So it will pop up this sort of get access button when it is applicable to the user's institution that the user selected in the beginning. So here are some examples of that happening.
BOHYUN KIM: If nothing's happening-- oh, and this one is open access. So Lean Library, universal LibraryAnywhere, has an option to connect to the APIs of Unpaywall and the core to detect open access version if the institution chooses to do so. And if none of that is possible, then it can be set up to redirect users to ILL service of the library. And it also has a third module called the library access.
BOHYUN KIM: So for individual websites, if a library chooses to do so, they can set up this custom message for a site to give specific instructions to gain access for users. So that's pretty much how it works. So hopefully, these visuals will give you some idea of how these two browser extensions work. Great. Thank you, Bohyun. Russell?
BOHYUN KIM:
RUSSELL PALMER: For my part, I would just say that we shared a very similar experience, and we're still working through it, at GALILEO. We had implemented WebEx for all of our GALILEO Portal subscribers, and it was very well-loved across the board, even by our K-12 teachers and media specialists, because of its ability to go to a web page, like a Wikipedia page, and activate those links with an ISBN link and get people the full text that way.
RUSSELL PALMER: So it was a very powerful tool, and when it fell out, it was difficult. Some of the-- so we're actually exploring Lean Library now as a proprietary possibility for replacing that functionality which we enjoyed, but we're also beginning to look at the open environment a lot more to see what options are available and what's out there. As a development team, the GALILEO development team, in terms of projects that I'll highlight just in brief and expand upon later, we are currently implementing ArchiveSpace for some of our public libraries and some of our academic institutions.
RUSSELL PALMER: We're providing that as a hosted service, and we're also working with our public libraries to implement, SimplyE, the e-book aggregator piece. So we're actually taking on the role of a hosted services provider, in some respects, for our libraries-- which is an interesting aspect of all the possibilities with open source versus proprietary. But this resonates well with me, Bohyun, and I appreciate you sharing it, because it's a learning experience for us as well, to see what directions other libraries are taking once those open tools expire or go away-- which I know we'll talk more about later.
LESLIE: Great. Thank you, Russell. Erik?
ERIK RADIO: Thanks, Leslie. This has been really great, hearing these examples so far. My particular library at University of Colorado Boulder has really increasingly been seeing the advantages of going with open source solutions for a number of digital initiatives that we've been undertaking, and probably one of the more recent ones has been the GeoBlacklight repository for geospatial data sets, which has been a really positive experience for us for a couple of reasons-- one of which is that it's been really easy to build on tools that link up to it because it is open.
ERIK RADIO: So we've built a Data Loader that we can customize when we need to as we need to, as data sets from different agencies vary, and the nature of how that data is structured-- quite drastically, sometimes. And so that flexibility has been a really great affordance for us. But further, I would also say that just like the participatory element of that technology has been really positive, and that there's a real sense of immediacy for getting involved with that community, sharing ideas, suggesting ideas, and it's been a really open and pleasant experience so far with us going through that, I think that that's indicative of a really positive trend for, at least, my library in particular.
ERIK RADIO:
LESLIE: Given that I used to work at UVA, for their libraries, I'm really excited to hear that from you. Brooks, what would you like to add?
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, our biggest example at Missouri State has been we implemented-- the first North American Library to implement Folio as our primary library services platform last June. And that has been a big change. We had been in a consortium with a hosted commercial system, shared hosted commercial system, for 20 years. And made that jump over, again echoing-- one of the reasons was the community involvement, the ability to drive and guide the development of the project, the fully-open API nature of the system was something that was really attractive to us.
BROOKS TRAVIS: And I'm sure we'll discuss that a little bit later. But that's a highlight for what we're doing. We've looked at Lean Library and Instant IOL, the new project from IUPUI, and right now, we're implementing LibKey solution for that. That's mostly-- we selected that for expediency's purpose, expediency's sake right now. One major open source project implementation at a time, I think, as we build capacity internally for that.
BROOKS TRAVIS: It's a new thing for both the libraries and our University as a whole.
LESLIE: That's great. I don't think any of us ever get the option to do one project at a time, so that's great. So the first question that I want to ask all of you-- what are the benefits of open systems? Russell?
BOHYUN KIM: [INAUDIBLE]
RUSSELL PALMER: I can start there. And just to build on a couple of things that Erik and Brook shared that transition well into this, we're typically interested in ways that we, in some cases, can contribute code-- I think we're talking about the community aspects of this, Erik-- when we're not even necessarily implementing that product yet. There's lots of opportunities there. We may implement things on a limited basis.
RUSSELL PALMER: There may be part and parcel of Folio that we implement down the road, even if we don't go in that direction. So it's great. I love that idea of the sense of community and the resource sharing. I think that's such a great area, because I feel like a lot of the proprietary products with resource sharing have dropped the ball in some way or the other, and we're taking a long look right now at Project ReShare at GALILEO to see what we think about that and what directions that could take us in.
RUSSELL PALMER: But in any case, as a consortium, we're just beginning, I think, to realize the potential of open systems, because as a consortium, you have so much stuff to manage, consistency is really important. And that's why interoperability is so key for us. We have all these divergent systems, and we need them to be as healthy and as interoperable as possible.
RUSSELL PALMER: And we certainly have a healthy understanding of the challenges that go with open source, but we also see the value that our colleagues at the Georgia Public Library Service-- our sister organization-- have realized with their PINES Evergreen ILS system. And that's been really powerful for them and offered them a lot of flexibility. So while open systems require coding to a standard and community approval, change can-- in my mind, it happens a lot more quickly.
RUSSELL PALMER: But you also have the ability to ignore code you don't want to use, or to fork code and create functionality others may not want. It creates an amazing degree of flexibility that just isn't found in traditional systems where you wait, and sometimes you wait for people to vote up or vote down certain enhancements. You're in a lot more control of things-- again, with that caveat, if you have really good developers.
RUSSELL PALMER: So that's where we are with this. Where we're exploring a lot of open source opportunities, with the idea that some of the failings of proprietary systems in terms of interoperability can be addressed by open systems, either in part or in parcel.
ERIK RADIO: Yeah, and I would second a lot of what Russell said-- that that customizability to fit specific workflows and scenarios is really key to open source systems. Specifically because we do have all these tasks in common between libraries, but there are idiosyncrasies to every institution that are unique to specific consortias and practices that are historical. But one other thing, too, that I think that is a benefit is that there really is transparency into how a system is built. And I think that as privacy advocates, we really want to know, what is happening to the data when it goes into a system?
ERIK RADIO: What is happening to it? Where is it getting stored? How is it getting stored? What's happening to it on the backend? And I think that these open source systems really allow you to have an open lens onto how those services get enacted in a very concrete way.
BOHYUN KIM: Yeah, and I would add that in addition to the flexibility of customization and the transparency of the source code, I think open source software also allows the libraries to develop a product that has a coherent feature set and embed the vision of the service. So we don't always see a proprietary product to address that. You have certain features, but not always, with the jibe with the others.
BOHYUN KIM: Sometimes, we have product that works in a certain way, but it does not support other things that we think are really important. And LibX is a good example of that. It was widely popular, I believe, not only because it was open source and free to use and all that stuff, but in addition, I think the way it was created it reflected the ideas of the librarians in the front.
BOHYUN KIM: They knew what was needed and how users would use this. And in addition, you also had this element of putting users in an active role as a researcher. So it was reflected in the design of the system that the users, as they used of this tool, they would develop these research skills along the way. So that allowed this LibX to be a pedagogical tool in a lot of library instruction. And we are probably not going to see something like that in proprietary software, as you can see in Lean Libraries, like Library Access, and other things.
BOHYUN KIM: So I think open source software provides this opportunity for libraries to be able to embed their own vision for the future. So I think that's a really plus for open source software. And one more thing that I would like to add is also, open source software, obviously, provides an alternative to proprietary products in the market. So when LibX went defunct, the market got really excited. And then, we are now seeing a lot of alternatives.
BOHYUN KIM: But during the 10 years or so when LibX was a de facto library extension, we have not seen any of those products. So that's something to think about. And now that it's defunct, library is caught off guard, so now we are rushing to buy something. It's not doing exactly the right thing, and now we are going to kind of have to influence those products.
BOHYUN KIM: But it may not actually do the things that we want. So that's something to think about when we lose an open source project that we depend on-- what's going to happen?
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, I know the biggest things with us with getting involved in Folio as our first big open source project adoption, we had used open source tools in the past for different things, but having that ability to influence and get involved in the community and steer that, especially right now in this early stage in the project, was critical for us. But one other thing I want to address, it's not just necessarily with open source projects, but open systems in general, even proprietary systems that provide open APIs, APIs that can be addressed to perform the functions that the system is capable of so that you can build custom interfaces and tools, is also important for us.
BROOKS TRAVIS: And that was one of the things that drove us in the direction of Folio, was our previous systems, while they had APIs, they weren't fully-featured. So we weren't able to perform all the functions for automation and things like that we wanted to be able to build tools and workflows within our organization to do. So that's, I think, the real benefit for us o open source and even open proprietary systems that have-- where the APIs are first-class citizens on the platform is really important.
LESLIE: So I'd actually love to follow up with that topic that you brought up for everybody. So what are the integration and interoperability concerns when you're considering proprietary versus open systems, and all of our infrastructures are now a mix of those?
RUSSELL PALMER: Sure, I can speak to that first, if that's OK. To be honest-- and this sounds really mean and vicious, and it's not really intended as such-- but we love our vendors, and we work with them on a day-to-day basis to keep all of this stuff up and running. But one of the most prevalent problems for us when it comes to interoperability in proprietary systems is vendor competition.
RUSSELL PALMER: Vendors will, for example, exclude key components from interoperability infrastructure because they sell a competing component. And we've also had vendors ask us to stop using certain APIs to pull our own data that we created from one environment to the other. And that, to me, diminishes the spirit of openness, even in the proprietary world, when you get your hand slapped a little bit.
RUSSELL PALMER: Our end goal is to serve the user, and when restrictions like this come about from infighting, we're not able to provide the best user experience. Now, a lot of vendors do communicate about this and work through these issues, but I think it will continue to grow as a concern. I've noticed a lot of vendors lately are creating proprietary authentication platforms, and we're implementing OpenAthens.
RUSSELL PALMER: And that becomes a challenge for us to get around. With open systems, our biggest consideration is often the maturity of an open product when it comes to meeting the needs of library staff and users when we're implementing something for so many end users. Anyone, any resident of our state, might use GALILEO. So always beta is a lovely concept that we've seen both in the proprietary environment, probably more in the open environment.
RUSSELL PALMER: But if an open system hasn't matured to minimum viable product status by our consortial standard, it creates interesting-- I would say not insurmountable, but interesting challenges for us from an implementation and development perspective. So those are the big things that we think about quite a lot on a day-to-day basis as we're looking at moving a variety of different types of systems forward.
RUSSELL PALMER:
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, for us, it's like how much of the functionality of the proprietary system is exposed through the public API interfaces, like I mentioned earlier-- particularly RESTful APIs? And are there additional costs involved in using them, or are they, again, a first-class citizen on the platform? What data interchange interoperability standards are supported by both types of systems, the open and the proprietary?
BROOKS TRAVIS: And with the proprietary systems, are there any license or other business limitations, like Russell mentioned, on what systems can connect with their products, even using standards? One thing in particular, that's we're Tipasa. We use Tipasa for our ILL fulfillment system, and its [INAUDIBLE] standard integration is only built for Alma right now.
BROOKS TRAVIS: So it's like, OK, it's [INAUDIBLE] two. Why does it only work with Alma? That kind of thing. So those are the biggest considerations on our side, as far as proprietary versus open.
BOHYUN KIM: Yeah, I can say a few things related to LibX and Lean Library Library Access regarding the integration and interoperability concerns. I think in assessing any type of systems or tools, I think people need to ask if the integration makes sense. So we tend to think that, OK, this product's integrated with this, and that, and that, and that. The more it integrates, the better-- which is not always the case.
BOHYUN KIM: So I think people need to understand that as the systems and tools get more modular, the interoperability and integration, I think the sources and methods of those things are achieved can vary. So it makes certain connections more fragile, certain things more reliable, depending on what standards are used or not used. So I think being aware of that is really important, and also whether a system or tools have a coherent feature set.
BOHYUN KIM: So sometimes I see these in proprietary software, that there is a certain integration. OK, works, but it is very heavy-handed. It's like works by screen-scraping or some kind of ad hoc method to grab things. So it's really heavy-handed, and then, I don't even know whether that feature is really that great, that it's worthwhile to really have it. So you have this sort of vulnerability to the system.
BOHYUN KIM: On the other hand, it doesn't really add a lot to user experience. So thinking about those interoperability and integration concerns, I think sometimes, open source software has a better feedback loop if the community responds it more responsibly. Then, their product tends to go wherever they think there is a profit. So the directions are very different right, and how their dynamics is going to go, but I think those are some of the things that people need to be aware of.
BOHYUN KIM: So as a specific example, Lean Library's library access imports each institution's easy proxy config file, because it includes all the domains of databases that a library subscribes to. But as you know, it's not intended to be a list of subscription domains for the library. It's not made for that purpose, but they use it as an approximation in order to make the feature of detecting a subscription database the user navigated to.
BOHYUN KIM: So this had some problems, and also, when you think about it, this major feature requires, at the back end, what kind of labor it requires-- overtime, ongoing maintenance, the cleanup. When you use a non-standard integration, what's, down the road, the consequences? Things like that. So two of the things that I would point out as something to consider for libraries when they look at simply the feature sets, whether there are lots of integrations, there are lots of interoperability, not all of them are desirable or worthwhile.
BOHYUN KIM: Some of them are more important. Some of them are not. Some of them are actually reliable and durable. Some of them are fragile, and you might have problems.
ERIK RADIO: Yeah, and I would agree with everything my colleagues have said here, and just add that there's enough challenges in getting data to be read by another system, just in terms of how that data is structured and formatted. And so-- and that's even with open APIs that are fully-featured. There's enough challenges there, too. And so when there is that competitiveness that I believe Russell mentioned that creates barriers to that, it creates a tension that unfortunately, the users are the ones that end up holding that, and we have to mediate that for them, which also creates additional labor that we end up kind of having to hold on for for them.
ERIK RADIO: And so I think that that's just not-- I think that open source things really can help mitigate that in very concrete ways.
LESLIE: So are there any specific situations that you've encountered in your work where one approach is preferable to the other-- proprietary versus open source or open systems?
ERIK RADIO: I can answer that one, if that's OK. I think that in my opinion, open systems are great for what I would call operational work, or work that forms the backbone of an organization that has a history in it. So a good example would be cataloging workflows or acquisitions workflows. There really is just a lot of desire to be able to control how that data gets created and also shared.
ERIK RADIO: And sometimes, we want to do new things with it as well. And when there's barriers to getting at our data, that creates a tension that's difficult to resolve. On the flip side, I would say that proprietary systems also can be really great when you want to spin up something really fast and you don't have, necessarily, the technical support to give that a project. Because open systems often require additional resources in terms of technical support that aren't always available, and I think that proprietary systems can be an effective solution for when you want to, maybe, try out a new service or rapidly spin something up.
ERIK RADIO:
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE]..
ERIK RADIO: Go ahead, I'm sorry.
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, I would echo a lot of that. I don't think there's necessarily a one-size-fits-all answer to that question. One thing that I have been just always considered here on the open source side is that for a lot of the major open source projects, there are somewhat robust solutions provider-- they provide hosting. They provide support, migration, and implementation services for those projects and for those products that can help bridge that gap between the proprietary solutions and the open source solutions without having to place a lot of demands on your organization.
RUSSELL PALMER: And that echoes one of the thoughts that I wanted to share on this, which is, in our approach, I think we're so used to all the bells and whistles of proprietary systems, and how they're marketed, and how they're approached, I think sometimes we forget that open might be-- it might not be as good, but it can be good enough to address a lot of specific needs.
RUSSELL PALMER: I'll speak to open again, in this case, as a specific example of the decision we made. Again, we worked very closely with our sister organization, the Georgia Public Library Service. We're both under the hat of the Board of Regents. And we worked with them to host SimplyE. And SimplyE is an e-book aggregation platform which you can use to bring lots of different e-book content together in one place from multiple publishers.
RUSSELL PALMER: And it's searchable. It creates lists. It manages check-in and check-out for ebooks all in one place. We didn't see a software or a product in the proprietary market that, first of all, did that and did it well, and we also considered hosted versus not hosted. With GPLS, they were looking at a hosted service for this, and we were able to save them a lot of money with that.
RUSSELL PALMER: But another consideration is certainly cost. While we realized initial savings for that, it's interesting, when you integrate an open source product into the mix, costs aren't always evident immediately. For example, with SimplyE, we still are saving a lot of money over a hosted service, but at the same time, we're watching various processes that we honestly don't fully understand yet in the SimplyE environment raising our AWS, our Amazon Services, where we have a lot of this service hosted.
RUSSELL PALMER: Those costs are slowly climbing, so you have to keep an eye on that. So I think cost is certainly a consideration, but again, compared to competing products in the vendor market, having the service hosted, the savings is still pretty enormous in the end. So I think cost is certainly another consideration that we think about.
BOHYUN KIM: Yes, I would like to talk about the cost a little bit of open source software and proprietary, because this comes up a lot. And there is this major trend in which like libraries tend to see the biggest benefit of open source software as that it's free to use. And I think that's good. Obviously, open source product, it can be a cost savings measure for libraries, particularly when we all deal with flat budget or decreasing budget year after year.
BOHYUN KIM: But seeing that as the primary reason to implement and adapt to open source product is actually a misuse. So I think it's really important for libraries to understand that. That's great that you can use this for free for now, even though there are lots of other issues like that comes with-- that you need to have staff resources and support, you need to have certain infrastructure in your institution to be able to fully customize and implement all that.
BOHYUN KIM: But still, I think having that sort of narrow, short-term view on open source software, I think that that's detrimental to the library community as a whole. So I would really like to emphasize that, because personally, I think it's really bad. And also, one more thing that I would like to point out is-- so folks have discussed why open source software could be preferred. Sometimes, the proprietary software is more advantageous.
BOHYUN KIM: It's turnkey, it's faster, it might be cheaper for smaller institutions with a small FTE and so on. A lot of times, institutions really hesitate to adopt open source software because they are worried about the longevity of the project, the sustainability of the project. They are like, Oh, there's no clear governance model. There's no business model.
BOHYUN KIM: I don't know whether it's going to be around, et cetera, et cetera. There is no reliable support for the product, and we use this for the daily operation. So all of this is not available. We're going to just go with, I don't know, some product, right? But the thing is, open source software needs to be sustained by the community that it benefits.
BOHYUN KIM: So it's like by saying that, libraries are creating a catch-22. They are responsible to create a business model, sustain the products that actually are integral to library community if we want lots of product that is going to be free from commerce or interest and reflect our values more closely. So I just see this all the time in the discussion of our libraries, of proprietary product and open source softwares.
BOHYUN KIM: So I really wanted to talk about that. And like I think Russell or someone mentioned that the cost breakdown, the return on investment of open source software and proprietary ones, is not straightforward. You might seem to save some money at a certain point by open or proprietary, but down the road, the dynamic changes. So I would really like people and the libraries think more deeply and over a long term how these things would turn out, and that it has an impact on the collective future of the library community as a whole, depending on what path we take.
RUSSELL PALMER: Yeah, I have just an answer to that since I commented on cost specifically. You're absolutely right. And using two examples, I just want to talk about cost considerations and backtrack on the SimplyE piece a bit. Ultimately, that is one where we've been very fortunate to realize some savings. But you're absolutely right-- the savings that we realized at first, when you talk about hosting costs and other things, and the cost of development and time to maintain that product, it begins to balance out.
RUSSELL PALMER: And there isn't always even a break-even in the open source environment, you're absolutely right. I would say as another example, we are exploring right now, as I mentioned, Project ReShare, the possibilities there, and we're very early on in our consideration of that. But there is absolutely no way that we would realize any cost savings with that in any kind of immediate way as we begin that exploration.
RUSSELL PALMER: But we would do it, as you mentioned, because it's the right thing to do if we can build from something that takes a lot of energy and development at first, but then, eventually, that moves to something that's a little bit more sustainable. And then, you're absolutely right, I think the third consideration with that, too, that you hit on really nicely, Bohyun, is community. I think as you're considering open source products, looking at that community, looking at the strength and the stability of that community, I think also looking at when vendors are actually involved and engaged with that community-- for example, in the Folio community, I feel like that, those are always good signs of a strong open source community that it's worthwhile to be involved with.
RUSSELL PALMER: So I think looking for those, those clues to the better open source solutions, is one way to approach it as well. But thank you for that. I think that was really insightful in terms of cost, because you're absolutely right. There's the famous quote-- I don't remember who said it initially- but the "free as in kittens" quote which I always like to tell people when it comes to open source.
LESLIE: Oh, yeah, we've all been there, as the free as in kittens situation, for sure. So in answering that question, a lot of you raised the issue of support for the product, or system, or tool that you're working with. And this really comes to mind, Bohyun, because you were talking about LibX, which went away, and then a vendor came into the market. And so I want to ask, what do you do when support or an entire project goes away?
LESLIE: But I'm also curious, Bohyun, if you could actually say why you think another open source project didn't come into that market space, and instead, a vendor, proprietary system, or several of those did? And then, anyone else, please weigh in on what you've had to do when something has suddenly disappeared from your infrastructure.
BOHYUN KIM: Yeah, sure. So I think the whole impetus behind the talking about this actually came because recently in my workplace, we both have Lean Library, Universal Library Access browser extension. And I have worked with LibX throughout the entire life span. So it's just ignited in me, why this is happening in the library community? So there are lots of open source of products in the world that comes and goes, and it is a completely natural.
BOHYUN KIM: You don't expect them to be around all the time. But in the case of LibX, it's really interesting, because this piece of software had been so well-received for over a decade. And people loved it and used it at libraries all around the word, adopted it. There are numerous editions that have been made. It was widely successful. And at the same time, over more than 10 years, libraries as a collective failed to come up with a longer-term plan for sustainability and longevity of the product.
BOHYUN KIM: It just stayed at Virginia Tech, and it's just not possible for a small number of people to go over the source code over and over over decades, considering how often the browser changes, right? And even in spite of all that, we haven't acted. And I'm not blaming any particular library or people, because I have an active user, and I haven't really found out any way to support it myself, right? So it goes to libraries and organizations, how and why they failed to act in time before this happened?
BOHYUN KIM: At the same time, libraries staff who have been also using this actively. There was a user community of maintainers who had been creating these editions and then updating and all that stuff. So there was communication there, but we also failed to organize ourselves to find a systematic way to contribute updated codes or provide the impetus to move forward.
BOHYUN KIM: So there was failure at multiple levels, and now it came down to, at the end of the day, after 13 years, it just went defunct. So you will still see on the web a lot of libraries had just simply ignored it and said, oh, our LibX is no longer available because of the prospect went defunct. We are looking for alternatives. Some big libraries went out and just bought products, that is whatever available, which it doesn't do anymore.
BOHYUN KIM: So I think it's just really insightful to think about. So a lot of times, when something like this happens, people tend to think, like, OK, so what's available now to replace it? What's the best among the available, right? I think that's a very short-term thinking. Like, why this has happened? Libraries hadn't reflected enough about something like this.
BOHYUN KIM: We just failed to act in time, and now we have lost a very viable and valuable alternative. When you lose an open source project that has been successful, and when you lose it, you don't lose your just one opportunity. You also lose a lot of efforts that went into designing the product, a lot of features that's never going to be replicated in commercial products.
BOHYUN KIM: They had some really innovative projects like magic linking and things like that I think is absolutely fabulous. It's probably not going to be replicated in other projects. So do libraries have a stake in this? I believe we do. I'm not saying that commercial products cannot be the same as LibX. It may be.
BOHYUN KIM: But what I am thinking is that libraries have a particular stake in having alternative models of how we envision certain tools and services that we want to have our voices closely reflected. And a commercial product is not going to be always give us that. So when open source project goes away, what we lose is just not one tool, like all the design, and philosophy, and ideas that we had behind that goes away, and it might never be recovered in time.
BOHYUN KIM: And I think that's something that is very devastating to the entire library community.
RUSSELL PALMER: That was very well said, and I would say, just to add to that, I think it's requiring somewhat of a culture change in libraries and information organizations so that we begin to think about this. I will fully admit, Bohyun, when LibX went away, I was fairly clueless at the time. Now I would have a very different approach to what we did, because we've changed the dynamic of our development group.
RUSSELL PALMER: We've moved to Agile Development, and we've started contributing to open source projects more now. We're more aware as an organization, and that has really helped. Now, if that had happened in 2020 instead of 2018, I would have gone to our development group and said, hey, is there something that we could do to take this code on, to help Virginia Tech to begin to make, perhaps, this a sustainable product?
RUSSELL PALMER: Or I would have seen, when we started to send support requests in 2016 in 2017, and no fault of Virginia Tech's-- as you mentioned, they're stretched thin maintaining this-- we noticed that it was taking a week or two to get a response if we asked them, those are clues that I would be much more aware of now and have a greater sense of community about now that we've taken on doing more and thinking more about open source.
RUSSELL PALMER: So I think there's some degree of culture change that has to happen in information organizations to get people thinking in that way. But I really appreciated your comments here. That was great.
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, I agree, that was really great. I don't have a whole lot to add to that. It's--
ERIK RADIO: Yeah, great. That was all really great. With this question, what happens when a project goes away, I mean, I think it's also an aspect of remembering that no system really is forever, but the ways we think about our work and the critical operations that we need to carry out have a fairly long shelf life. And so I think that what we learn about a given workflow in light of an open source project can help us iterate on the standards that go into building those ecosystems to exist at all, but there also is that deflationary effect when an open source project diminishes, because they do take a lot of labor to steer and develop, and it's frustrating when it doesn't materialize or, sometimes, it just disintegrates.
ERIK RADIO: But looking forward, maybe, just optimistically, I think that it's important to remember that you can take those pieces that did work in those projects and write out their open source, and you can concretize those into meaningful operations and future systems, too, that you want to see replicated in the next open system, or as a means of driving proprietary options towards more open affordances, too. But the bottom line is that scalability question-- is, at what point does maintenance become too big for one place, and what are the mechanisms at that point to really get a broader community support towards the maintenance work, which often goes unnoticed for a lot of projects?
ERIK RADIO:
RUSSELL PALMER: That's a really good point, too. The fortunate thing now is, I think, in the era of GitHub and shared code repositories, you're right-- we do still have the basis of the product and the code available to us to take a look at, to examine, to see if it can be upgraded, or changed, or integrated into something else. That's a great point, Erik.
BROOKS TRAVIS: Yeah, that ability to always take that forked code-- or take it as long as you comply with the license terms-- and use that in another way is one of the great options of open source. Or when proprietary-- because I mean, proprietary systems go defunct all the time, too. Or the company that developed them develops a new product they want you to pay more money for, and so they just ratchet up that support cost to you over time.
BROOKS TRAVIS: It's what a lot of Voyager libraries that are planning to move to Folio are seeing, where their support costs, the support contracts for Voyager go up, and up, and up every year, and they're like, want to get off that train.
RUSSELL PALMER: And that's certainly driving a lot of the work that we're doing right now. As an Alma/Primo library, we're certainly reviewing and evaluating the whole environment as we approach looking at the ILS in the future.
LESLIE: So we're down to our last couple of minutes, but I want to get in one final question with some brief answers. A lot of you mentioned standards in your answers, when we're talking about APIs or RESTful services. So what is the role for standards and standards organizations like NISO in the open source development and implementation realm?
BROOKS TRAVIS: So I can start that one. For me, standards provide a framework for building the integration and migration points for open source systems to talk to both other open source systems and proprietary products while still allowing the flexibility for implementing the user-facing interfaces in ways that are differentiated and competitive, while giving flexibility to customers or the implementers to select the tools that work best for their situation.
BROOKS TRAVIS: To me, that's really the benefit of having standards in these things for interoperability.
ERIK RADIO: Yeah, I would agree with that aspect of competition, because I think when there is a shared framework or protocols, it creates a space for there to be experimentation around similar services without having to be in total conflict with a different approach entirely. And so I think that by having consistent underlying data models or exchange models, it allows for that level of, yeah, just competition to really flourish.
ERIK RADIO: And I would say that with standards, thinking about that, platforms do decline, but standards let us move forward without having to rethink an entire approach, and it makes this easier to envision futures we want to go in and how certain technologies can get us there without compromising unnecessary operations for it.
BOHYUN KIM: Yeah, I think standards are beneficial for both open source products as well as a proprietary, but I think it benefits more for open source software. Because if you are a developer, obviously, it's a lot easier to just work with the standards to make your product work, rather than writing code that would take care of multiple ad hoc scenarios. So standards and the existence of robust standards helps the development of open source products.
BOHYUN KIM: And also, from the receiving end of open source products, if open source software is built based upon standards, it functions more reliably. It's more durable. So it is easier for libraries, for example, to adopt it. So I think it works both ways. In the case of vendor products, I think it's important for libraries to understand that there are some competing incentives for vendors to implement the standards.
BOHYUN KIM: They would usually do that if libraries really pushed for it. Sometimes, it takes some time. Vendors also have a vested interest to push their suite of products. So they will definitely emphasize and invest more on making their suite work better and closely and less so with other products. This is the vendor lock-in that we talk about a lot. So there is a disparity in how much benefits standards we will bring to open source versus proprietary.
BOHYUN KIM: So having that in mind, I think, will help libraries in assessing what solutions would work best for them.
RUSSELL PALMER: And I would echo that. That's almost exactly the tone of what I had written in my notes for that question. [LAUGHS] But I just would add to that, I think that with standards in mind, I think vendors, libraries, information organizations, we have to work with the end user in mind, because that's ultimately who the standards benefit. It gives them the item that they want. It gives them access to the journal article they need.
RUSSELL PALMER: And I think that's a really important aspect of the work that standards organizations need to do.
LESLIE: Great. Well, I really want to thank all of our panelists today for their really thoughtful answers to these questions and conversation with each other. And we hope that you enjoyed this and that you are looking forward to participating in the rest of the NISO Plus conference. Thank you very much. [MUSIC PLAYING]
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