Leader's guide to open everything

From LLN

Leader's guide to open everything

Contents

Open.

It just has a good sound, particularly if you're in a community-oriented field like librarianship. You think availability, transparency, maybe freedom--openness, in short.

Sometimes it seems as though Open is like New and improved. Adding it to anything makes it better, or at least makes it look better. But it's really just a word. Calling something Open doesn't make it so, any more than calling something Green makes it ecologically sound.

Library leaders need to be aware of the various opens that can affect libraries. PLN already has extensive resources on the two most vital and well-established Open initiatives, Open Access and Open Source. We'll add resources on other “Open” topics over time--and this overview will change over time.

Editor's note: For the moment, this is a shell--and readers are encouraged to add or email examples of “Open” discussions worth linking to or excerpting.

The two big starting points: Open Access and Open Source

Two major Open initiatives share several characteristics that make them good starting points:

  • They've been around for years, not always under the “open” name.
  • They're not in any way scams or commercial teases--but they're both open to a variety of interpretations and possible abuses.
  • Both initiatives are international in scope.
  • Both initiatives have reasonably well defined core sets of principles and aims.
  • Both initiatives can be used to improve libraries
  • Librarians and libraries can be actively involved in both initatives.

Both also share characteristics that appear common to many Open initiatives, albeit not to faux and fledgling Opens:

  • While there may be well defined core aims, things can diverge beyond those core aims.
  • A fair amount of disagreement and discussion takes place within the initiative, occasionally somewhat destructively.
  • The initiatives include high-profile extremists and absolutists--but also thousands of people just trying to make things better.
  • You need not be an absolute adherent to the initiative in order to support it and gain from it.

Those two initiatives are Open Access and Open Source.

Open access

The core goal of Open Access is to make scholarly literature--and specifically refereed journal articles resulting from scholarly research--freely available online to be read by anyone at any time.

LLN already has a strong and partially unique set of resources to bring you up to speed on Open Access:

Open source

The core definition of Open Source is computer software whose source code is available under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form.

There's more to it than that.

While LLN doesn't yet have a set of Open Source resources as extensive as for Open Access, there's an article that will get you started and several articles to improve your sense of why it's important:

  • Open source notes and resources - This starting point includes key definitions and points to articles, resources and blogs to learn more.
  • Why look at open source now? - John Houser discusses reasons librarians should pay attention to Open Source and provides more explanation of what it's all about.
  • From open stacks to open source - Joe Lucia discusses where Open Source could take us.
  • Open source plans - the February 2008 PLN Challenge Panel
  • Open source and the wisdom of crowds - Jamie LaRue asked a group of library leaders which technology trends would affect libraries the most over the next few years. The answers? Open source for libraries, open source in general, and mobile devices.
  • Private equity and open source - The Library Leadership Network Peer Panel discusses the influx of private equity into library-related firms--and how open source might offer alternatives.

Other Opens

Watch this space. To be expanded and rearranged as related articles are added and categories become clearer.

OpenLibrary and Open Library

The Open Library has as its goal “one web page for every book ever published”--in essence, a global open catalog. It's currently a project of Internet Archive, funded in part by a grant from the California State Library. It was launched in July 2007. It has close connections to the Open Content Alliance (and early versions of OCA's viewing page used the Open Library name as well).

It's an ambitous project. It's been talked about a lot on library blogs and in other forums--but there's a lot more than talk already. Some very bright people are involved in the project. Expect to see more about it here in the future.

For now, this is a good starting point--and, not incidentally, includes a preliminary catalog with more than 22 million titles--including more than a million with available full text.

Note: You'll also find lots of other things with “Open Library” or “OpenLibrary”--how would that not be the case? UK's Open University Library used “Open Library 2.0” as an internal name for its new website. RePEc has been called “an open library for economics” in a 2000 article whose author has a somewhat different Open Library concept in mind. More than one library website uses “Open Library” to mean something other than what's found at openlibrary.org. Most results, however, are likely to be discussions of Open Library itself.

Open Content Alliance

The Open Content Alliance (OCA)

is a collaborative effort of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that helps build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia material. An archive of contributed material is available on the Internet Archive website and through Yahoo! and other search engines and sites.

OCA began with a bang as a multipartner book digitizing effort similar in some ways to the Google Library Project, but with very different goals and practices. OCA itself has been relatively quiet (the most recent item in the “Press” section of the site is from September 2007), but scanning itself has continued--and more than a million public-domain items are available through the Internet Archive (and, presumably, through OpenLibrary.org.)

Open Archives Initiative

OAI

develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. OAI has its roots in the open access and institutional repository movements. Continued support of this work remains a cornerstone of the Open Archives program. Over time, however, the work of OAI has expanded to promote broad access to digital resources for eScholarship, eLearning, and eScience.

The OAI protocols are at the heart of institutional and subject repository harvesting, making it possible to build indexes of “green OA” articles and other resources. OAI is distinctly linked to Open Access, but (as noted above) goes further.

OpenLibrarianship

Carl Grant's term for “a new model of librarianship that embraces the power of community, the ideas of Web 2.0 and the ideas that have created open source for the benefit of all.” Discussed in these two articles:

OpenLibraries: a different meaning of “libraries”

If you search for “OpenLibrarianship,” you'll get the documents above (here or on Carl Grant's blog)--but then you'll get hundreds or thousands of items related to OpenLibraries and OpenLibraries.org.

OpenLibraries is not about academic, public, school and special libraries. It's about “open source libraries”--that is, collections of open source software elements to support development of other open source software.

If you're involved in creating Open Source software, you may find OpenLibraries useful. Its direct relevance to libraries is otherwise marginal.

OpenBook

This one's difficult--the term already has too many meanings to establish a single nexus. For example:

  • OpenBook by John Miedema “is for book reviewers, book bloggers, library webmasters, anyone who wants to put book covers and data on their WordPress blog or website.” It gets covers and book data from OpenLibrary.org.
  • OpenBook(TM) “converts printed documents or graphic-based text into an electronic text format on your PC, using quality speech and the latest optical character recognition (OCR) technology.” It's commercial software ($995).
  • OpenBook 2.0.1.1 is a FireFox extension that “allows for customization of the Add Bookmark dialog. The bookmarks tree can be automatically opened and elements can be revealed or hidden.”
  • OpenBook version 7 “is a research-based English-language software solution that teaches reading, writing, speaking, and listening to pre-K through adult learners.”

...and so on, to say nothing of dozens (hundreds?) of “Open Book” uses.

Open data

While the concept is old, the initiative is new and, so far, not terribly well-formed. The idea (in my words): Data produced by researchers should be openly available for other researchers to build upon.

The first goal would seem to be making publicly-funded data publicly available.

At the moment, Wikipedia's article on Open data may be as good a starting point as any.

OpenEverything?

The list goes on. We'll add to this article and add linked articles as appropriate.

Thirteen Opens

Michael Migurski lists thirteen "opens" in an April 14, 2009 post at tecznotes. Just listing those not already covered may offer a sense of how broad (and diffuse?) the "open concept," if there is such a thing, can be (and, if you read the post, how often we can be reinventing and renaming what came before, e.g. proper technical standards):

open infrastructure, open architecture, open standards, open ontology, open canvas, open content, open mic, open forum, open door (policy), open borders, open identity.

How many of these do you need to pay attention to? Seth Godin amended and expanded on the list in a May 13, 2009 post, coming up with 22 "opens" and his take on some of them. You might find some of the notes revelatory or convincing (possibly depending on how much you regard Godin as a guru)--and you might also see how readily someone "knowledgeable" can redefine an entire field! A few excerpts:

  • open standards: "relying on rules that are widely used, consensus based, published and maintained by recognized industry standards organizations. It means that you're not in charge, the standards guys are. Bluetooth is an example of attempting this, so is USB." [Editor's comment: So is Godin saying standards are bad things?]
  • open access: "APIs that make it easy for people to get at the data on your platform (twitter is a great example, so is Google maps.)" [Editor's comment: And here you probably thought open access was about access to scholarship! But, you know, scholarly research is trivial compared to twitter.)]
  • open house: "allowing prospective buyers to walk around inside your product before deciding to buy."
  • open sauce: "a company talks about its business methods publicly to build a brand."

Other "new opens" in Godin's list: open video, open book, open engagement, open bar, open elections, open to all, open interaction, open and shut.

(Godin's blog isn't open to comments, so there are none.)

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