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the origin of community(@ penn libraries)

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a brief timeline of how the pennlibraries are moving to a strategy that

leverages community source software & community participation to achieve its

goals …

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… you know how to set this up, right? you’re a computer guy …

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… and so, a short review of what we’ve learned, how we’ve evolved, and what

we’ve left along the side of the road

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project shopping

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physically & administratively separate developers, system administrators & IT

support staff, who respond to expressed needs within their own

capabilities & capacities …

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… produce diverse solutions using a range of technologies to deliver applications & services that are

minimally integrated …

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… 1 problem + 1 developer + 1 server= 1 solution …

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… exhaustion of development capacities as support & enhancement

demands overwhelm developers & system administrators …

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… so, project shoppingled to…

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project lists

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library managers create project lists to try & understand development

capacity & priorities …

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… allowed team-based approaches to projects that would have been out of

scope for a single developer …

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… while increasing transparency, project lists did little to discern

priorities or provide governance for management or on-boarding new

projects …

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… “one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do

two can be as sad as one, it’s the loneliest number since the number

one” …

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… and so, project listsled to…

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consolidation

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bring most developers together with systems & support staff under unified

administration …

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… provides internal methods for selecting technologies, protocols &

methods …

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… and a deeper set of resources to deploy for development, operation &

support …

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… better coordination of diverse sets of vertical applications built on a diverse technical architecture …

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… and so, consolidationled to…

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portfolios

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develop service layers that are horizontally arrayed, addressed

directly, & orchestrated to provide composed functionality …

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… built on standard infrastructure for virtualization, for enterprise level

development & integration, and for open source release …

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… but, still a ‘go-it-alone’ strategy …

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… and so, portfolios arepreparing us for…

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community

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a rich community

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… and in september 2008, the pennlibraries joined the mellon-funded

ole design project & will soon become a founding partner in the

kuali ole build project …

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… to gain benefits for penn libraries that includes …

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organize software around workflow, not the reverse

gain format neutrality to improve staff deployment based on function rather than format

deploy more staff to service roles rather than processing roles

assimilate enterprise project management techniques, adopt best-practice from partners

aggregate collection metadata from local and external sources

integrate with university infrastructure for IdM, procurement, data warehouse, teaching & learning

automate manual processes

increase the skills & experiences of staff

raise library IT to the enterprise level

put a tiger in our tank

be a leader in software development on campus & in the community

participate in setting the direction & priorities of solutions

sustain our efforts

opportunities & engagement with other community-based projects

leverage diversity of effort & collective intelligence

control our destiny in true partnership with other libraries, other campus agencies, & with vendors

… some of these benefits accrue directly from the technology, but

most are consequences of participation in the Kuali OLE

community …

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… and so, community becomes our strategy.

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and a last thought

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the origin of community

michael winkler

penn libraries

winkler4@upenn.edu