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Free and Open Source Software as Free Culture

Tundun Folami – Systems Librarian

Andrew Preater – Director of Library Services

University of West London, UK

#KohaCon22 | Lawrence, Kansas | 21 September 2022

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Outline

Free (libre) open source software (FOSS) and Open Access values
Perceptions of FOSS in libraryland
How we advocated strategically for FOSS
Lessons from our Koha implementation at UWL
How FOSS enables continuing professional development (CPD)

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FOSS and OA values and principles

FOSS are free cultural works in the domain of software
Open access (OA) research and scholarship are free cultural works in the domain of higher education

Freedom Defined Contributors (2022). Definition. [online] Free Cultural Works wiki. Available at: https://freedomdefined.org/Definition [Accessed: 19 September 2022].

In terms of the values principals and the political aspects of freedom in free software and OA, there is a huge overlap.

When we say Free Cultural Works we're using the definition developed by Freedom Defined, which is referenced by Creative Commons among others.

This definition is similar to the GNU project's Four Freedoms for software, and includes freedom to:

use and perform the work
study the work
redistribute copies
distribute derivative works

This point about derivative works are a sticking point for OA and one reason use of the less free Creative Commons licenses under the umbrella of "Open Access" is so problematic.

We consider this licensing does mean that both OA and Free Software mean that these cultural works form part of a knowledge commons, meaning the cultural resources available (in theory at least) to all in society.

Library workers advocate and practically facilitate open access in our work in research support or scholarly communication teams. We are enthusiastic to the point of sometimes being dismissed as "cheerleaders" by those critical of Open Access movement. However, long experience and evidence shows a relative reticence toward free software – and a lack of bold action in this space in libraries.

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Some perceptions of FOSS

"Open Source attractive intellectually, but pragmatically we need strong vendor support having a tiny technical team in an under-resourced smallish remote/regional university." (Academic library, large collection size)

"Our institutional ethos always tries to avoid open source and bespoke offering, based on many past experiences." (Academic library, large collection size)

"Don't have staff or skills to maintain open source but have heard great things about Koha from small libraries." (Unknown library type, very small collection size)

"I like open source as a concept. However, we do not currently have the necessary staffing expertise to set-up and maintain an open source product." (Academic library, medium collection size)

Breeding, M. (2022) Library Perceptions 2022: Results of the 15th International Survey of Library Automation. Available at: https://librarytechnology.org/perceptions/2021/ [Accessed: 19 September 2022].

Here are some example narrative comments from Marshall Breeding's annual library perceptions survey – which asks specifically about attitudes to free software (which is terms open source).

Beliefs focus on ideas that free software means:

self-hosted, perhaps on-premises
you develop it yourself; hack on it yourself
you will need a large team to do all of this – whether an IT teams or a library systems team.

Marshall says, "Narrative comments [suggest] that many libraries avoid open source products due to a perception that they would need more staff with technical skills." (Breeding, 2022)

These are the same sticking points I have seen since my first roles in higher education in the 2000s. These have remained stable over time, even as cloud hosting and infrastructure as a service has become dominant.

I'll come back to that comment about "many past experiences" in a minute, it is relevant…

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Strategic advocacy for FOSS

We selected and implemented Koha supported by PTFS Europe in 2020

We did not set out to select FOSS

UWL has a low risk appetite around activity that affect students' educational experiences

Lowe, M. (2022) Risk appetite statement. Available at: https://www.uwl.ac.uk/about-us/policies-and-regulations/risk-appetite-statement [Accessed: 21 September 2022].

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Strategic advocacy for FOSS

Our business case was based on:

Benefits to the institution
Risk mitigation based on experience with non-free software
Financials

Lowe, M. (2022) Risk appetite statement. Available at: https://www.uwl.ac.uk/about-us/policies-and-regulations/risk-appetite-statement [Accessed: 21 September 2022].

We implemented Koha supported by PTFS Europe in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Having talked about the politics of open and free culture – actually, we did not set out to purchase a free software system!

When I wrote the business case with my management team we focused on:

a) what benefits we anticipated in migrating system. We expected a free software system to compete fairly against anything else on the market.

b) how free software could mitigate risk to our institution.

UWL has a low risk appetite around activity that affect students' educational experiences – although we recognise an overly risk-adverse attitude can also lead to threats to future sustainability.

c) In English HE we have a regulator (Office for Students) who expect we deliver value for money to the taxpayer and students who pay fees. In terms of total cost of ownership or contract value for free software versus closed source, we saved about 79% of the cost over the contract lifecycle. In my professional experience, this is spectacular.

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Strategic advocacy for FOSS (2)

“Do you, or can you license your software to your customers under the same terms you enjoy yourself? For example, if your system contains software licensed under the Apache License, can you provide software derived from this to customers under the same license?”

Question used in soft market-testing procurement phase.

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Practical implementation

Success and challenges of implementation

Support from PTFS Europe
Data extraction
Picking up skills

Migrating systems during COVID-19 lockdown

Implementing Koha at UWL was my first experience of going through a library system change and there were several notable positives I took away from the project:

One being that PTFS Europe, who supported the migration (and continue to support our system), was very helpful during the project. Especially regarding the data extraction from our legacy system (Capita ESS) after we were quoted over £22,000 (so around $25,000/25,000 Euros) by our previous library systems provider. They were also very helpful during the initial testing phase, once our data was loaded into our test, and then live system.
Another positive is that working through the data extraction ourselves (with support from PTFS) as opposed to having our previous LMS provider do this work allowed us to get to know our data really, really well which would prove especially useful for me going forward as the systems librarian in our team.
The fact that we were working remotely also made it easier to interact well with PTFS.
Overall, it was a great learning experience, I gained more networking knowledge than I anticipated and experienced the benefits of working with an open-source system from implementation and getting to customise settings on a more detailed level.

There were also, however, some notable challenges that the implementation presented:

The biggest one being that we migrated systems during the national lockdown period of 2020; in the UK this was a complete lockdown between March and October 2020, and onsite access to the university was only for essential reasons. A particular challenge this presented for us was that we could only test the Circulation settings as it pertained to how the kiosks and sorter in the library were working post-migration to a certain extent until we were allowed back on campus.
Our previous LMS Capita could one, only be accessed via VPN, and two, VPN access still couldn't give us to the reporting module we were using to extract data from the legacy system. Our I.T team eventually found a workaround that allowed them to access the system via a spare PC onsite, but this delay meant that we were more pressed for time when it came to testing with the data in the new system.
We also experienced delays from vendors, this was factored into the equation, but we had to wait a lot longer than expected especially for our reading list and discovery system vendors, even after we went live with the new system.

A key takeaway for me post-implementation is how much control our team has over the library system. PTFS Europe manages the system for us on the database level, but we can make decisions as a library and then go into the Admin module and adjust settings to improve our workflows. We can also have a more hands-on approach, for example, when it comes to reporting on data in the system, circulation rules and managing budgets from within the Acquisitions module.

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How FOSS enables CPD

Collaboration with other Koha users
Community engagement

The collaborative nature of Koha has meant that I have been able to find a wide breadth of video tutorials and articles from other users around the world to help me understand the system better as we continue working to optimise it for our institution. Being a part of the Koha community has allowed me to work with other systems librarians in the UK, and the wider community abroad, to resolve issues while using Koha and make adjustments in the system to improve workflows.

A recent example of this is when I was talking with a systems librarian at another university, that was using a previous version of Koha, about some connectivity problems we were having following our most recent upgrade. When we eventually resolved the problem at UWL, I was able to discuss what worked for us with them, and they were prepared to deal with the issue after they upgraded to the same version.

- Frequent engagement in the Koha community, through speaking directly to Koha users and other institutions, testing patches, joining mailing lists, and lurking, and eventually speaking, in the Koha IRC has given me varied avenues to develop my knowledge of Koha and share ideas.

Outside of the community, one of the best ways that I have learnt about Koha is by playing around in our test environment and adjusting settings to see what happens, or until I break something and have to fix it. I did a lot of this before we loaded data into our live system to test how certain circulation rules or system preferences would affect accounts. Even after going live with Koha, playing around in the test environment has helped me to come up with ways to resolve issues that we’ve come across as we go through upgrades and implement new policies.
Having more control over the system has also enabled me to develop my SQL knowledge and allowed me to provide reports for the wider library team in a more timely manner, rather than having to raise a ticket with support and wait for a response.
Lastly, being the main person looking after Koha in my team has allowed me to develop the skills needed to explain technical issues within the system in a clear way to my colleagues in the library services team; this in turn has forced me to better understand complex issues that occur in the system.

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References

Breeding, M. (2022) Library Perceptions 2022: Results of the 15th International Survey of Library Automation. Available at: https://librarytechnology.org/perceptions/2021/ [Accessed: 19 September 2022].

Free Cultural Works Contributors (2022). Definition. [online] Free Cultural Works wiki. Available at: https://freedomdefined.org/Definition [Accessed: 19 September 2022].

Lowe, M. (2022) Risk appetite statement. Available at: https://www.uwl.ac.uk/about-us/policies-and-regulations/risk-appetite-statement [Accessed: 21 September 2022].

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Contact us

Tundun Folami, Systems Librarian | tundun.folami@uwl.ac.uk| @_yomikoreadman

Andrew Preater, Director of Library Services | andrew.preater@uwl.ac.uk | @preater