From a few days ago:
IBM is moving to Firefox as its default browser
http://www.sutor.com/c/2010/07/ibm-moving-to-firefox-as-default-browser/
If IBM's doing it then why not the libraries also!?
Libraries could even motivate volunteers to develop mashups for them ("a web page or application that uses or combines data or functionality from two or many more external sources to create a new service", wikipedia), a further long term saving. To cite a quick quote:
"People wish also in the main, to give their fellows and themselves the opportunity for self-improvement. This wish is the vital fact at the bottom of the free, compulsorily supported public library. It is on these vital facts that we should keep our eyes and our thoughts, not on the feature of compulsion. Work then, for the extension of the public library from the starting-point of human sympathy, from the universal desire for an increase of human happiness by an increase of knowledge of conditions of human happiness" Library Daylight - Tracings of Modern Librarianship, 1874-1922, Edited Rory Litwin[2]
But what of the library's responsibility to commerce and the market economy.
The world is changing, from a society in which we had to go to the expense of books and magazines and the radio and TV to pass information around to one in which information flows at virtually no cost. It's a bit like putting your foot down on the accelerator and feeding more petrol into the engine, we're going to go faster (the information economy). And libraries have to be a part of that. People now find they can be a lot more intelligent if they want to be, and we do! It's all very new though, I think the notion is just beginning to dawn on us, and it will take a while for the habits of the past to get left behind and new ideas to roll in.
I'm sure the market economy has had something to do with the current standards of our civilization ;) Ironically though our leisure time increases as we become more affluent (not the other way round). The role of capitalism in advancing civilization is quite well researched I think, the role of leisure time though is understood and valued less so maybe. But what I think is dawning on us is that given the information inputs that people now have, it is both the formal economy as well as an 'informal information economy', that will benefit. The market economy should accelerate, but peoples' leisure time should become more profitable as well. I must admit I'm wondering if the 'Big Society' is not symptomatic of this sentiment, the wish for people to participate is an obvious desire, and recently this desire has become much more attainable (at least in theory!). Maybe the value of leisure time in driving our civilization is becoming more recognized. Does leisure time now have much more power than in the past. I'd cite two articles illustrating I think how we now have a much greater cognitive ability but have yet to realize that potential:
Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world
http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.html
The future of the library
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/the-future-of-the-library.html
So what does all this mean for libraries. Libraries serve both the market economy and the leisure time we have. If the market economy is about the allocation of resources to the activity of most value (making the most difference), yet people judge it makes the most difference in their lives to write open-source software (and we have to respect their values), then maybe this is an overlap of leisure time and the market within the economy and the allocation of resources. Both open-source and leisure time and the market can drive our economy. The input of our changing leisure time has the potential to become in the future of increasing importance to our progress as a people.
I'm by no means an expert on the subject but if I were to finish with some questions. Would the use of OSS be any kind of problem for the operations of the library? Would using open-source in our economy translate into economic growth (freeing finance for elsewhere)? We have i) more leisure time than ever, and ii) times in which we have moved from information being treated as precious jewels to having more than we can cope with, is not supporting OSS supporting the desire of people (and in their leisure time) to understand and process that data?
Gareth Osler
Library Web
http://libraryweb.info
(A foot note and off topic but research mentioned in the Shirky presentation above leaves me asking the question of would removing library fines actually increase the return rate of books, if it were emphasized to people that browsing is a very useful research technique and hence the books are needed back on the shelves as soon as finished with etc. Social motivation rather than a few pence. Which is all good open-source values :)
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