Librarian in a Banana Suit

Karen Schneider gave a lovely pragmatic talk on understanding open source at the Iowa Library Association 2009 Annual Conference (which was a welcome change from the sometimes cult-ish “Open Source is good, Open Source will solve all your problems” rhetoric).  I hope to be able to link to her slides on slideshare as soon as I can find them, but here it is in a nutshell:

I. What is open source?
Schneider started out with a definition of open source from Wikipedia (I love it when librarians aren’t afraid to use Wikipedia!):  “Open source software generally allows anyone to make a new version of the software, port it to new operating systems and processor architectures, share it with others or market it.”  She pointed out that sometimes you don’t even know when you’re using open source:  Audacity, WordPress, Firefox, and lots of in-flight movies are just a few examples of open source software in action.

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Lucky me, I got to go to the the Iowa Library Association 2009 Annual Conference, Deciphering Our Future:  Transforming Iowa Libraries, in Des Moines from October 21-23!  Check out write-ups of the following sessions right here on Librarian in a Banana Suit:

• “Waxing and Waning” with Karen Schneider
• “Understanding Open Source” with Karen Schneider
• “The Vampire in the Rocket Ship” with Yolanda Hood and Kelly Stern
• Thursday Evening Banquet with Janice Harrington
• “On-the-Fly Tech Support” with Jessamyn West
• “Collective Advocacy: Engaging Librarians in the Open Access Movement” with Jennifer McLennan and Faye Chadwell
• “Close Encounters With Digital Citizens” with Lee Rainie
• “The New Library User and How to Serve Her (and Him)” with Lee Rainie

Karen Schneider wore deer boots and turtlenecks circa 1975, and claims she can still be spotted wearing them to this day.  She learned what “going commando” means only recently.  She is also known as the free range librarian, a co-moderator of the PUBLIB public librarian discussion list, an Air Force vet, the newly appointed library director at Holy Names University, a published food writer and a beer home-brewer.

Schneider was also the keynote speaker for Friday morning’s session of the Iowa Library Association ‘09 Annual Conference, where she gave her talk, “Waxing and Waning: Tech Trends for the Library Landscape.”  You can check out the slides from her talk here (via slideshare):

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Jennifer McLennan, Director of Communications at SPARC, and Faye Chadwell, Associate University Librarian at Oregon State University, came to the Iowa Library Association 2009 Annual Conference to talk about libraries and Open Access in their talk, “Collective Advocacy: Engaging Librarians in the Open Access Movement.”

As McLennan explained, SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition) is “an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system.”  Basically, SPARC takes advantage of the amazing opportunities created by the Internet to advance the conduct of research and scholarship!

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