[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] SPAM: Belated introduction, and a couple of questions

[Fred.King at Medstar.net]

Gentlemen and Mesdames,

Greetings, all. I'm Fred King, and I'm one of the medical librarians at 
the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC. I've actually been 
lurking on this list for a few months, ever since my boss talked with one 
of the Evergreen folks last year and asked me to look into it. We're a 
large urban hospital with a collection of about 8000 books and maybe twice 
that number of bound journals. Our monthly circulation sometimes ventures 
into the high two figures; we also track in-house use, which is usually in 
the low three figures. To put it another way, we don't exactly tax the 
capacity of our current ILS.

Even before our current ILS vendor announced they were making Large 
Changes in their product, we were interested in exploring other options; 
now I'm looking at all the features offered by the new 'n' improved system 
and I'm hearing Ginny Slade saying "Just what we need, a $50,000 car to go 
to Burger King in." [1] We don't need to catalog books in Hebrew and 
Chinese--although we have residents from all over the world, most of our 
books are in English. The only items that aren't are some titles on 
medical Spanish, and even then, I wasn't expecting a kind of Spanish 
acquisition. The change to their new system sounds like a major 
expenditure of time and effort, and if we're going to install a new system 
*anyway,* we may as well try, or at least look at, something new. I'm 
biased in favor of open-source software; I've used OpenOffice.org for 
several years, and I like it a lot more than that other office package. 
The fact that it fits within my price range [2] is an additional 
advantage.

One problem I foresee with our implementing Evergreen is that, with a few 
exceptions, the folks in our IT department don't exactly know where their 
towels are. Last month they moved our shared directory to a new server, 
and it took four days, a service request, and quite a few e-mails and 
phone calls before they set the permissions so we had access to the 
folder. It then took another five days, two service requests, and more 
e-mails and phone calls before we had access to the files *within* the 
folder. So if we're going to be running a Linux server, the person who's 
going to be doing it is probably going to be, um, me. That's fine, since 
I'm interested in learning a lot more about Linux, but I'll have to fit it 
in with my other stuff, such as maintaining two dozen public computers in 
the library, being sysadmin (sort of) for our current ILS, taking care of 
the online serials [3], being the first-string resource person for the 
staff computers and all that runs on them, the fifth-string backup AV 
person, keeper of the official statistics, webmaster, a reference 
librarian for three hours each day [4], and the traditional "other duties 
as required." [5] Oh yes, and on the weekends when I have the energy and 
venue, I take my cards and prints around to local craft shows to sell. All 
of this may explain why I'm so late with an introduction, and why I ended 
up in the emergency room with chest pains a while back. [6]

So, if anybody's still reading this, I have a few questions: I've used 
Unix shell accounts, and I've installed a couple of varieties of Linux on 
machines in the past, but my knowledge is rusty and I've never set up a 
server before. I have a few extra computers in my basement that I can 
experiment with, as well as a few network hubs, a wireless router, etc. 
[7] I also have a book catalog to play around with, if I can figure out a 
way to move it to Evergreen from the Microsoft Access version it’s 
currently in. Since I'm a librarian and book collector, my inclination is 
to start with a book. Any recommendations for a good overview? And what 
variety of Linux would you recommend for not-quite-but-almost newbies? 

Thanks,

Fred King
Medical Librarian, Washington Hospital Center
fred.king at medstar.net


[1] Updated to account for inflation.
[2] Free.
[3] I never wanted to be a serials librarian; I wanted to be a lumberjack.
[4] Down from 4.5 before we got another person
[5] In the theatre, this is known as "verstaility." Here in the library, 
we call it "economy."
[6] Not a heart attack, though nobody knows exactly what's causing it. 
Probably iatrogenic.
[7] At least, I think I do. Right now everything's buried under piles of 
stuff for the show on Sunday.

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