[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Greetings -- I have a question...

[Don McMorris]

On 1/5/07, Jason Etheridge <jasone at georgialibraries.org> wrote:
> On 12/30/06, Don McMorris <don.mcmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Can we use Evergreen to build a "community library system" of sharable
> > > resources among a group of interested participants? I envision an
> > > "interlibrary loan" arrangement between families, as opposed to
> > > libraries. I've looked at the descriptions and the end-user demo, and
> > > the whole system looks very promising. I'm sure I have the computer
> > > skills to deploy the software, and I have access to a place to host a
> > > server, but I need to know if it's even worth trying:
> >
> > This is something that can absolutely be done.  It is something I've
> > been considering also, but haven't taken the time to start yet.
>
> I've seen something like this before, but for the life of me I can't
> find a link.  I remember it was more commercial and wanted you to
> buy-in with a nominal fee or something.  It felt kind of like a
> distributed Netflix.
>
> One pie in the sky thought I had before is that it would be cool if
> someone were to offer  a stable and maintained instance of EG for
> public/casual non-mission-critical use, similar to those free unix
> shell accounts you can get your hands on.  It would be open to anyone
> like GPLS's demo and dev servers, but not subject to the whims of us
> developers who enjoy restarting services, changing features, tweaking
> permissions, and purging the database all the time. :D
>
> So, for example, I could conceivably get an account on this server and
> create my own JasonBranch library, and maybe configure my own circ
> rules to say that I'd be willing to lend books to BradSystem.

You been monitorin' my dreams Jason? ;)

I would love to do that on a large scale (nationwide).  There's no way
in purgatory I could afford to do so though...  As such, I'm planning
a "local"-area pseudo-consortium, consisting of myself and a couple
other local libraries...


>
> There are a quite a few hurdles that would have to be crossed for this
> to become a reality, but it'd certainly be fun. :)  Of course, other
> projects like LibraryThing might evolve in that direction, and then
> maybe we could try pushing OpenNCIP development (thank you David
> Fiander!) to link them all together.  There's no need for a
> monoculture.
>




> --
> Jason Etheridge
> GPLS -- PINES Development
> http://open-ils.org/
>