WebJunction

Howard County Library, a suburban Maryland library located between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., has six full-service branches, including a Central Library.  Given a population with a median income of $88,000 a year, the Library is well supported by its community, as you might expect--over 90% are library card holders.  The absence of the word "public" in the Library's name is significant.  A recent rethink of its audience and mission led the Library to conclude that it is well suited to bridge the gap between academic and public libraries.  It now promotes itself as "the" Library in Howard County.

A library in such a situation could just sit back and enjoy its good fortune.   But the Library works hard to use its resources to explore technologies not just to bring benefit to itself, but also to pave the way for other libraries with fewer resources.  So, why not create a customized version of Linux for library use?  And why not install it on staff computers?  And--what the heck--why not install it on public access computers? 

Howard County Library customers gaze at the wonders of Linux via the LuMix.

All pretty outrageous, you might say.   But now that they've gone ahead and done it, if you ask Head of IT Amy Begg De Groff whether the Library thinks about going back to the Windows world, she says, "NO--we want to keep going and get all staff on Linux."  And recognizing that both patience and courage are virtues, "but give us at least five years." 

What led the Library to choose Linux?  For one thing, there's ideology.  The Linux community has the intent that “information is free and access should also be free.”  (Hmm, where have we heard that before?)  It’s a vision very compatible with the intent of libraries.

But of course, there are practical considerations. And in fact, it was realizing that upgrading the libraries Windows NT machines would come with a $35,000 price tag that made the IT staff take a good hard look at open source solutions.  Amy says, "We feel an obligation to spend taxpayer money responsibly.  We realized that we can provide more machines for the public with the money saved--and lead the profession."

Other considerations that made Linux an attractive choice were the operating system's stability and flexibility, and its resistance to viruses and other security intrusions--including a better ability to prevent user from booting up machines from a floppy disc or CD-ROM.  The improved management capability would mean a lot, given the 200 public access computers the Library supports.

Another factor in choosing Linux was the idea that the Windows operating system includes many, many bells and whistles that the Library didn't need--and didn't want to have to pay for.  With Linux, they would be able to create and manage an environment that specifically met their needs.

It didn't hurt at all that Library had a couple of Linux aces up its sleeve: IT employees Luis Salazar and Mike Ricksecker.  It's not every public library that can create a customized flavor of Linux named after two staffers, but "LuMix" is exactly that.  Luis and Mike have since formed an organization  to distribute and support LuMix (more information on their web site: LuMix Tech).   LuMix includes an operating system kernel (which handles the same basic management tasks as Windows) and a desktop environment that looks and feels very much like Windows.

"LuMix?   Is that a new game?"

Most Library customers walk into a Howard County Library, look up a resource in the Library's Dynix OPAC or surf the net, find what they need, and leave without ever knowing they're using a (gasp!) Linux system.   However, there are some differences.  For one thing, Internet Explorer won't run on Linux, so those computers use the Firefox web browser.  For most web sites, that's just fine--but for some tasks, like online banking or tax software, IE is required.  Howard County does still have some Windows PAC machines for these situations--although they plan to migrate those to Linux by the end of the year. 

Similarly, machines designated for word processing still use Windows and Microsoft Office.   The Library plans to replace these with Linux computers running Open Office (MS Office's open source equivalent, which is already part of LuMix).  The Library believes that since it is as feature-rich as its Microsoft equivapent, customer needs can be sufficiently met by Open Office--and new and more powerful versions of the product are emerging with regularity.  As the Library moves more definitively toward an open source environment,  it will be essential to provide customers with clear information about what they can and cannot do at the Library, and why.

The IT department admits that it could have done a better job of preparing staff for the transition to open source.  As Amy says, "our audience didn't care about open source, so they didn't see the advantages."  She hopes that other libraries who make this move can learn from their experience--and they'd be happy to offer suggestions based on what they've learned.  Perhaps the biggest issue has been educating staff about how to help customers accomplish their computing goals at the Library given the open source environment's security advantages, without "blaming" Linux for what customers sometimes see as its limitations.  One book that has been helpful is the “Linux Client Migration Cookbook,” a transition planning guide that starts with excellent information to orient new users.

What's next for the ambitious folks at Howard County Library?  There are several projects in the hopper.  They're testing a product called "Crossover Office" that tricks a Linux desktop into thinking it's on a Windows machine, helping to close some of the gap in user perceptions of differences between the systems.

In line with its mission to respond directly to what customers need--not necessarily just mimicking conventional computing practice--the Library is planning a survey and possibly some focus group work to understand more precisely customers' needs for word processing capabilities.  Early results are indicating that for many needs web-based HTML editing solutions are more than adequate: opening up fascinating new possibilities for helping customers accomplish their tasks efficiently, inexpensively, and in ground-breaking ways.

And based on the conviction of Howard County Library management that libraries should be "leading the world" in content management, they're looking at Plone, an open source (of course!) system (http://plone.org/) as a possible solution.

Howard County Library is unlikely to sit still.  So if you want to have an idea of what the future of open source library computing might look like, or should look like, or could look like, keep an eye on Library.  But you'd better not blink--you're likely to miss the next innovation.

You can contact Amy Begg De Groff, Head of IT, at degroffa@hclibrary.org.  The library's web site is http://www.hclibrary.org.  For more technical details about the implementation, see the Library Journal article written by Associate Director Brian Auger.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.