A link to a thought-provoking article on Open Source business models was posted by Stephen Abram on his blog, Stephen’s Lighthouse.  If you follow that last link, you may note that not only does he post the link “without comment”, he has also turned off the option for his readers to comment on the article.

I suspect (but truly don’t know) that this is because of the firestorm of attention he received surrounding a position paper he wrote, and that his company was circulating to some of their customers.  If comments were enabled on his post, the following thought (probably compressed) would have been left by me.  Now it is a post all its own:

What libraries need now, more now then ever, is a good, open discussion of software and service models.  Many of our problems derive from weaknesses in those models, and many of our future problems will derive from weaknesses in the models we choose to move forward with.

The New York Times article is a good example of reporting that misses the elephant in the room:  the Open Source model is not the same as the Closed Source model.  The closed source model uses sales and company profit to determine success.  An open source project could succeed in that way, but looking simply at this ignores the model.

If a group of people put the effort into creating, maintaining, distributing, and using an open source software product, it will survive.  If the project is dynamic, and responds to the needs of the users, it will thrive.  If it does all of the above better than the closed source companies that make competing products, then it is not fair to judge them based only on sales and profit.

One other thing to add to the mix:  don’t ignore the wealth created and saved by those who use the product.  If this were calculated and compared, there might be a few surprises in store for companies, including some companies that have libraries for their customers.

The New York Times Blog announced today that they have released an API for their Best Sellers list.  Library programmers should jump on this.  Imagine being able to display information about an item’s rankings – dates, placement, etc. – in your OPAC like you can show book covers, Google Books, etc.

The data only covers June 2008 forward, but they will be extending it back to 1930 within the next few months.

This is a great move by the NYT; their Best Sellers list is considered definitive, and encouraging its use and adaptation means it will continue to be influential.

found via Web4lib (thanks to Steve Toub)

This seems to be fresh news, in that I can only find it on two sites:  The New York Times is opening their web content to everyone, eliminating the subscription model that has existed for years.

Not a bad piece of news…

The other location I found this on was the Metafilter blog

When TechCrunch posted about images of the pages of the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows being available via a torrent site called The Pirate Bay, they were reporting about a newsworthy event within their blog’s scope (technology and society).

Scholastic, the publisher of Harry Potter, thinks differently. They have served a takedown notice to the site, which has responded by publicizing the notice and explaining their position. They are likely to be safe in this, as Salon, CNet, and The New York Times all posted the information on the same day.

Consider this:  does this blog post aid in violating Scholastic’s copyright? If you think it might, please note that every link in this post (including the one’s in the p.s.) can be found independently via Google. When does the right to provide information about an event become publicity for that event? When does giving out information become aiding in the abusive use of said information?

And how does that affect a library’s role in answering reference questions, and providing access to information? Note that I am not limiting this line of questioning to copyright violations…

p.s. Jessamyn at Librarian.net has posted a link to a site that summarizes much of the posted book, chapter by chapter. I warn you that the first thing your eye will see on the page, assuming it is true, will tell you a major, major element of the story. I won’t know for a few days whether this has spoiled my reading of the book, but you get to decide whether it is better to wait and let J.K. Rowling tell you herself. Jessamyn’s post is here, if you decide to take the risk. The direct link to the summary is here.

Comment (7/23/2007):  I finished the book early this morning; the creator of the summary gets more items wrong than right.  So, if you looked and haven’t read the book yet, you may not have spoiled the fun!)

The New York Times is offering it’s TimesSelect service for free – if you register with an .edu e-mail address.

You can register here.

from Web4Lib post