Open versus Free

While I'm waiting to see what people use in their own life or in their library, I will continue with the subject of Open Source Software.

The question that was raised during the "Getting IT online" session of the ARSL conference was "what is the difference between Free and Open".  It is a legitimate question and one many of us do not know the answer to.  Let's start with the basic definitions. 

Most of us are familiar with CLOSED software.  This is software or programs that we use all the time.  Examples of this are Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.  These are programs that we use but cannot see the programming for.  We must take these products as is or chose not to use them.  This is also called proprietary software.  The majority of the time, we do have to pay for these programs. 

FREE software is exactly that, free.  It is free proprietary software that we may use but not change.  Examples of this include Twitter, Google Docs, and Meebo. 

OPEN software is free.  It is also software that you can see the back end of it.  this means that if you know how to do programming, often in Python or Perl, you can change or adapt the software to what you want it to be.  You can make a program into what you or your library needs.  Examples of this include Pidgin, Koha, Powerline, and Dim Dim.  (If you don't know what these are, don't worry.  I'll explain them in the next blog). 

Welcome to the Rural library and Web 2.0

As an individual in my late 20's-early 30's, I could see the glamour and excitement concerning Web 2.0 technologies. They were exciting and new. Everyone wanted to test drive them and see how wonderful they were. There were even library systems and regions using the 43 things (or some libraries cut it down to 21 things) in order to get their staff into the spirit of it. It was great and fine for personal use. Who wouldn't want to find old friends on MySpace or Facebook? Who wouldn't want to store and share their pictures on Flickr? What person wouldn't want to keep track of books owned and read using LibraryThing?

But after the initial excitement, I couldn't help but sit down and say "okay, these things are terrific for me personally. But what's the point of using them for a library?" I started seeing other libraries in my system using Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and blogs. Then I started taking a long look at said libraries. (Let me provide some background to the library system I am a member of-we are a county in Pennsylvania that ranges in urban sprawl to farm country with a little bit of everything in between. There are libraries in the middle of larger towns and ones in smaller towns. The majority of the libraries are small, despite their location, and only a couple can be considered rural.) The libraries using these tools were either large or in larger cities where the population is very technologically saavy. The community is using Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and more. Thus, it makes sense that the libraries are using these tools to reach the patron where the patron is at. That's what libraries need to do.

But, in a little experiment to reach the teens and tweens-I created a MySpace page to see just how tech saavy my rural part of the county is. Despite advertising in and out of the library, out of over fifty teens in our area, only five friended the library. No one cared. A blog failed as well. Don't get me wrong, we have some really technically saavy individuals out there but most are the kind that got up in arms when the local paper folded and went out of business. They like monthly or quarterly paper newsletters. They are farmers or blue collar workers who just don't have the capability or the time to go online except for the most basic things.

In speaking to other rural and small librarians recently at the 2009 ARSL conference, they shared similar concerns. Why should the rural library care about Web 2.0, or Open Source for that matter? What does it have to offer us? Hopefully, this blog will answer those questions and offer solutions you didn't think of before.