NDSA:Open Source Software

Scoping the Project

Key Issues to Consider in Evaluation of Open Source Platforms for Digital Stewardship

The group is exploring key issues and points of consideration in use and practices for using or developing open source software for key components in digital preservation software systems and workflows.

The goal of this project would be to synthesize some of the general work that exists on factors to consider on open source software (ex. modularity, indicators of active community, etc). See some of the references at the bottom of this page for examples of some of that work. We would then contextualize these considerations in relation to particular issues that emerge when planning for long term access to digital objects.) For example, serious consideration about what kind of imprint any tool has on the objects one is preserving. This could also include some considerations about some of the particular values that open source offers for thinking about long term access.

The work product would be a brief guidance document, or short paper outlining these considerations.

Developing Questions For Ourselves to Respond To

What kind's of questions do we want NDSA members to respond to that will help us in identifying key questions to ask when making decisions about each of the use cases? Please post question ideas on the NDSA:Open Source Member Questions page.

Suggestions for who would be interesting to talk to

Please post ideas for NDSA:Who we Might Want to Invite to Comment on each of these cases. Ideally to invite them to comment on the key decision points. It would be great if they can comment on the doc.

References

• Four use cases (Harvard): File:Use case.pdf

1. We need to choose software solutions, potentially open source, for a project.
2. We learn of an opportunity to participate in an existing project to collaboratively develop an open source software product.
3. We see an opportunity to initiate the development of a collaborative open source software product.
4. We have locally-developed software that could be made open source.

• Decision Support Tools. Open Source Software in Libraries. [1]
  • Includes a survey tool, cost factors, etc. Some (all?) of this information is the same as on the code4lib wiki.
• Decision Support Tools. Code4Lib wiki. http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Decision_Support_Tools
  • Includes advantages, disadvantages and costs of using OSS, and links to other relevant documents

• Reflections on open source software projects and digital stewardship
  • Post about SIMILE Exhibit: Lessons Learned for Sustainable Open Source Software for Libraries, Archives and Museums
  • Post about Omeka: Growing Open Source Communities: Omeka, End Users, Designers and Developers

• Articles on evaluating Open Source tools from various perspectives
  • Evaluating Open Source Software: Corrado, Edward M. (2008) Evaluating Open Source Software. In: European Library Automation Group (ELAG) Conference, 22-24 April 2008, Bratislava, Slovakia. http://codabox.org/61/
  • Rainer , A & Gale , S 2005 , ' Evaluating the Quality and Quantity of Data on Open Source Software Projects ' , Procs , vol 1 , pp. 29-36 . https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2299/2076/1/902200.pdf
  • Goh, D., Chua, A., Khoo, D., Khoo, E., Mak, E., & Ng, M. (2006). A checklist for evaluating open source digital library software. Online Information Review, 30(4), 360-379. http://dr.ntu.edu.sg/bitstream/handle/10220/6183/2006-dl-checklist-oir.pdf?sequence=1
  • Evaluating Open Source Software, M Kennedy; Defense AT&L http://www.dau.mil/pubscats/ATL%20Docs/Jul-Aug10/Kennedy_jul-aug10.pdf
  • How to Evaluate Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS) Programs http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/procurement-infopack.xml
  • Decision factors for open source software procurement http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/procurement-infopack.xml

Working Title

25 Questions to ask when considering open source software for digital stewardship and preservation

Goal

Refine a set of questions or a decision tree that we provided to help guide decisions around open source software’s use in digital preservation and digital stewardship.

Process

We work off of Andrea’s set of questions, refine them and tweak them if we like. Then we set up a series of calls with people we identify as having some particular insight and or expertise. We send them the revised document before hand, and then give them a chance to comment on the initial set of questions. They can offer stories of times when a given issue was particularly important, make suggestions for how they would prioritize these issues, remark on what they think should also be included or if there are some things that don’t need to be included. We take significant notes on each of the calls and post those up on the wiki as we go. So, we would have monthly calls with one expert a month for, say five or six months. After each call we would tweak our document in light of the previous calls and organize our notes to keep track of things we will want to talk about in a final report that accompanies the final revised set of questions. At the end of this process we would have a set of organized questions that partners could use as a tool, we would then also produce a report that explained why these were particularly important questions based on our own experience and including commentary from those involved in the process.

Schedule

Here is a quick schedule I would suggest for working on this:

1. January we identify, contact, and schedule our conference call speaker/commenters
2. Feb through June we do monthly calls with speakers, taking notes and iteratively revising our set of questions.
3. July we share the questions and something reflecting on their development at the NDIIPP/NDSA partners meeting.
4. Aug-September, we draft the final report doc
5. October-December we would disseminate the resulting products and start planning our next project.