[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Disturbing FUD, more disturbing source

[Mike Rylander]

As you might imagine, the folks at ESI talk to a lot of Evergreen
users, vendors and advocates in our work lives.  Many or most are
librarians, some customers of ours, some are orthogonal vendors, and
some could be called competitors -- though I'd find it hard to think
of another ecosystem of "competitors" where the buzz-word
"coopetition" is more fitting.

Over the last couple weeks several people have shared with us a
strange bit of FUD.  (For those not familiar with the term, FUD stands
for “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.” It's the practice of disseminating
negative, and often vague or intentionally misleading information.)
The people from whom we have heard say that they were told Evergreen
cannot handle libraries of their size -- the library is just too big
and complicated for Evergreen -- and they should just look elsewhere.

The thing is, we're not talking about a 20-campus, 30-million item ARL
with 15,000 serials subscriptions and 100,000-item/year EDI ACQ
requirements.  This was a medium sized library, with just a few
branches and under 300,000 bibs, some light serials and ACQ
requirements, and processes in the range of one million circs per
year.

Now, I bet many of you, like me, have heard things just like that
before from, in particular, vendors of proprietary ILS'.  As the
success of Evergreen in libraries both large and small has continued,
despite their best efforts to the contrary, that drum beat has, of
course, died down a bit.

The problem is, the claims we're hearing are being made by a vendor
that purports to provide support, implementation, hosting, migration,
training and development services surrounding Evergreen.  The
statements being related to us are patently false, and are being made
to libraries that are either interested in using, or actively
attempting to use Evergreen.  When I heard this I was incredulous.
Why would a group that claims to provide services surrounding
Evergreen tell their prospective customers such provably false things
to people who came to them for advice and direction? How could they be
so wrong about the functionality and scaling capability of Evergreen?
Why would they provide such factually incorrect advice and direction,
instead of connecting the people with questions to folks that have
answers? And, yes, they know where to find data, evidence and answers.

I suppose, though, that it doesn't matter why.  In the end, the only
way to fight FUD is with the light of truth and evidence.  So I ask
that you all please join me personally and everyone else here at
Equinox in actively pushing back against this sort of misinformation.
Whether meant maliciously or not, the spread of misleading or
downright false information hurts our entire community.  Letting such
things stand by not addressing them with facts will only allow those
false statements to gain some amount of legitimacy through inertia.

I don't want this email to be seen as a battle cry.  While I have in
the past and still do encourage everyone to write publicly, honestly
and analytically about their successes -- and failures -- using
Evergreen, to help us all collectively learn from each individual
group's experiences, I'm not looking for that sort commitment or
investment.

I have three objectives today: to raise awareness of this specific
issue, because it is so disturbing to me personally and harms us all
in the end; to remind everyone on this mailing list that each of us
has the opportunity to help spread the empirical, evidence-based
information about Evergreen; and to request that those here in the
community that feel they have a representative story with Evergreen to
make themselves available for questions and clarifications.

While I and my coworkers at ESI have the opportunity to talk privately
to more community members that many others do, we are certainly not in
an entirely unique position.  If you hear of vague or misleading
information being promulgated, please take a moment to politely
address it.  Or, if you don't feel comfortable or qualified to speak
with specific evidence, you can always direct someone with inaccurate
information to the community as a whole.  We're a pretty accepting
group, and we can answer pretty much any question if we know it's
being asked.

If it doesn't seem like a situation where a mailing list is
appropriate, I am always happy to privately help clarify any
misconceptions regarding Evergreen.  I know there are others out there
that also do this all the time, publicly and privately.  If you're one
of those people, and you are willing to risk being asked to spend even
more time helping clarify and correct misconceptions, please let the
rest of us know.

So, I guess that is sort of a battle cry.  I think, though, that this
is a proper battle to pick.

Thanks, all,

--
Mike Rylander
 | Director of Research and Development
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  miker at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com