Open Source CD Lending For Public Libraries? 292
phatlipmojo writes "Bob Kerr has taken what might well be an important step in getting open source software to the masses: donating CDs to public libraries for lending. It's a simple idea, but fraught with complications; indeed, at first, he couldn't give the CDs away to the wary libraries. Mr. Kerr dealt with the complications admirably, and has had a great deal of success getting open source CDs into lending libraries around his home country, as Mr. Kerr's howto PDF and this NewsForge article detail. What kinds of suggestions would Slashdotters make in addition to Mr. Kerr's to help make open source software on public library shelves a widespread reality?"
A nice piece of work... (Score:4, Informative)
Major props to him for taking the time to write up his experiences - both the successful moves and not-so-successful ones as well.
Re:Images to provide (Score:2, Informative)
The for-Windows Open Source Software CD [myip.org]
Re:BYOCD (Score:3, Informative)
However this just puts the "clutter" of old cd's into the users domain instead of the library's domain, and multiplies the clutter. So instead of the library having, say 4 old copies of some software, you have X amount of users with 4 old copies of some software with a grand total of 4*X useless old copies instead of the library having 4 old copies.
Re:BYOCD (Score:4, Informative)
You'd have to disable copying
Photocopiers are available in most libraries, yet this doesn't seem to have created a huge problem with "piracy" of books.
Sure, there are warning posters above them telling people not to violate copyright; if this suffices for printed books and magazines, then why not for CD and DVD materials as well?
My support of Linux has left me with old distributions that I would love to donate to my local library. Probably I ought to do newbies a favor and only donate the newest releases instead of that old RedHat 4.2.
No thanks. (Score:5, Informative)
We have almost completely stopped circulating CD-ROMs of any sort because the patrons have an expectation that the library will help them make it work, and if you mix initially lousy or just plain old software ("this storybook requires you to install quicktime 2.1") with who-knows-what the patron's got at home, it spells customer service disaster. No matter what kind of a disclaimer you put on it, circulating this kind of stuff would incur far more ill will from clueless patrons than it would benefit any unlikely geek who knows what they're doing but doesn't have access to sufficient bandwidth.
However, I would happily offer burners for public use and make blank media (and our bandwidth) available. That way, they get to keep the disc. Or hand them out at intro to OSS classes. Or mirror some trees. But put them on the shelves? No way. On top of everything else, they'd be outdated before they even made it through cataloging.
Nice idea though.
Good plan (Score:4, Informative)
I figure that with just a bit of effort, you could make a small tabletop version of this for under $1000 or so. I mean, all it needs is a cheap system, a burner (preferably without a tray, as they tend to get broken in public places), and a monitor. Form factor could be exceedingly thin with a custom casing for it, esp. if you used an LCD panel for the screen.
Thin and small is good here, because that means it's not taking up space in the library, which would make getting the librarians to agree much easier.
Write some custom software to basically provide a menu of images that the user can pick from (and optionally allow the local LUG to remotely administer the thing), assure the librarian that it's all open source software (which entails explaining OSS to them), get their agreement and assure them that it's no maintainance at all for them (plus let them sell blank CD's/DVD's on a markup, and it'd be done.
Re:libraries use the software (Score:5, Informative)
There is a SourceForge project for this. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No thanks. (Score:5, Informative)
While sticking to one's guns is of course possible, it's not good customer service to offer a product with a disclaimer or to turn away a patron in need of assistance. Sure, its par for the course in the commercial world, but we prefer to uphold a higher standard of service.
And bestsellers aren't revised several times per week.
What would be a far, far cooler idea (although not as cheap) would be to develop a kiosk that maintained its own local copies of many high-profile projects and allowed users to select from a menu what they wanted to burn to a blank they supplied. On-demand content, they get to keep it, and the kiosk could keep itself updated. All of the benefit, but none of the risk, unless of course someone manages to burn a disk on a day when a bug was in the tree. If the content is freely reproducible, why should they have to bring it back, or even worse... incur FINES! then it would no longer be free (as in beer).
Re:This may seem like a stupid question... (Score:5, Informative)
Broadband is still hard to get in rural parts of the US.
Walking/bikeing/driving for 5-10 minutes to pick up a few 700MB isos is still going to be faster for 90% of the people out there for some time to come.
Don't check them out, give 'em away (Score:5, Informative)
We just dropped off about 300 free CDs at the Berkeley Public Library last week (stop by the Info Desk for a copy), during some recent events [pglaf.org]. As others have pointed out, libraries don't really want to catalog and manage stuff, nor do they want to worry about broken and scratched CDs. So, give 'em a spindle of 100 burned CDs or DVDs and let these discs walk out the door!
There are a lot of challenges to making this work truly smoothly (like the cost of putting a nice label on the CD, and troubles with competing DVD formats that don't always read correctly, and who's willing to burn them), but if the goal is to get content "out there," why bother with lending when it only costs a few cents to just give away a CD?
At Gutenberg, we're trying to start a volunteer-based effort that will let anyone request one of our CDs or DVDs via a Web form, then we'll send it to them by postal mail -- free! For a few hours of volunteers' time per month, and minimal costs (donated or reimbursed), why not!
This is not specifying LINUX!!! READ the article!! (Score:2, Informative)
In the cited articles, the products listed included Freeduc, OpenOffice, Gimp, and others. It was also stated that the software packages were installed and tested on a variety of systems, including Mac OSX, Win9x, Win2k, and WinXP.
OpenOffice, for one, is available for Windows as well as Linux.
This entire article is about OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE. There are OSS products available for non-Linux platforms.
That's all, carry on.
Try University Libraries and LOC (Score:3, Informative)
OS/GPL software has an initial general target audience "The Desktop".
I suggest, in the USA, obtain a LOC ISSN [http://www.loc.gov/issn] listing as an annual "Open Source" software reference on CD/DVD media with an abstract description of a desktop OS Linux distribution with appropriate supporting GPL desktop software for YYYY. Then again a different path may be more appropriate (like a periodical) check under the LOC Cataloging Programs and services [http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir].
Donations of OS/GPL software references (listed in the LOC catalog) to university and community college libraries, in the USA, may be accepted as a gift to the library and checked out by students, professors,
University students are more likely (I think) to discover value in OS/GPL software, and maybe even request the university library obtain the most up to date releases of the Linux kernel and other OS/GPL applications. Well, where would educational institution libraries obtain free (or media cost) OS products for their shelves and loaning to students?
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Authentic People prefer dominion over the moment, a place, and self.
Authentic People plant seeds of human evolution, destiny, and envy.
Primitives will always enviously try to raze the dream and ideal.
_ Plutocrat Tyrants prefer judicial jeopardy to honorable death.
_ Plutocrat Megalomaniacs prefer death before public recognition.
_ Plutocrat Capitalist prefer a debased public to civilization.
_ Trivial Denizens prefer a sullied public to honorable endeavor.
Read the article, please (Score:3, Informative)
Also, the author is in Scotland and states that broadband penetration is 5 to 10% there, which means 90 to 95% of the population is NOT going to be able to download these in a reasonable manner.
Even in the US, there are large chunks of the population where broadband is not available, even just a few miles out of large cities, sometimes.
Re:BYOCD (Score:2, Informative)
- Install only enough software - and hack and recompile the sources, if necessary - for the machine to be able to record from an existing datafile/TOCfile pair on the HDD.
- Don't have a "proper" shell, just a simple menu which gives you a choice of CDs.
- Password-protect the BIOS, so the machine can't simply be rebooted from a CD.
- Assume that a librarian will be able to spot anyone up to no good and deal with them before they do any real damage.
It might even be possible to hack the ide-scsi module so as to make a CD-RW drive emulate a write-only device.Print "May Be Loaned By Libraries" on CD's Label (Score:2, Informative)
In South Australia, we once got
a local library to buy one of the
low-priced, multi-CD-ROM BERKS sets.
('can't find a URL for the UK-based
guy who published those CD-ROM's)
First, there was the question of
whether the disk-set could even
be housed in a library, where
others might use, borrow them.
They apparently have a central
purchasing department to decide
that, based on the license of the
items under consideration.
It took quite a while to decide
to buy a set or two (for several
library branches); it likely cost
more to make the decision than to
buy & ship the sets they eventually
ordered.
Upon receipt, the CD-ROM were placed into
the (no-loan) Reference section.
It took getting them to eMail the
publishers to get the CD-ROM's
shifted into the Loanables section,
but they were not at all quick or
interested in doing that, or even
accepting the publisher's reply eMail
as a definitive answer to their question:
ie would it be consistent with the IP
owner's license to loan these disks.
At least, now that the smoke has cleared,
we can look back & think that
this library has had a chance to
discover & learn a bit about
Open Source materials.
Re:libraries use the software (Score:3, Informative)
There are no such strings attached to the Gates Foundation computers. The only requirement is that you provide internet access with them.
We even got an optional "internet server". I told them straight up I would wipe it clean & make it a Debian/Apache/PHP/Squid box to replace the current one. That was cool with them... they just wouldn't support that software. They didn't even blink. Didn't care. As long as it was put to good use, that's what they wanted. Hardware support wouldn't be withheld, either.
I was a little suprised myself, and thought it was pretty cool of them.
There, I said it. The one good thing I have to say about Gates.