I’m not really part of the Jasig CAS Community (learn more), but I do maintain the wpCAS WordPress CAS client and I’ve started development of a CAS server component for WordPress. That project is on hold because one of the products that I’d expected to integrate with it doesn’t use standard CAS and the vendor of that app has chosen to modify the JASIG CAS server to support their apps.

The standard is the protocol, not the server application, though we probably won’t really understand that until we see more CAS server implementations. Nonetheless, it’s important to keep that point in mind if we we hope to grow the usefulness of CAS.

Microsoft just won’t quit. Now they’re trying to make OOXML an ISO standard. Please help stop this.

Here’s how I explained it in Open Source Software for Libraries:

The state of Massachusetts in 2005 announced new IT standards that required its 80,000 employees and 173 agencies to adopt open file formats. The decision didn’t specify the applications to be used, just the format of the electronic documents they created, stored and exchanged #. In making the decision, the state also had to establish a test for openness. What Massachusetts settled on was surprisingly simple #:

• It must be published and subject to peer review
• It must be subject to joint stewardship
• It must have no or absolutely minimal legal restrictions attached to it.

The result, and the subject of considerable controversy, was that the state found the ISO-certified Open Document Format along with Adobe’s PDF to meet that test, while Microsft’s formats, including its Office Open XML format, didn’t #. The critical failure of Microsoft’s OOXML format was that the license didn’t allow others to build applications that could both read and write the file format, meaning that Microsoft would be the only legal vendor of full-feature applications that used Office Open XML #.

Microsoft applied pressure, and a lot of campaign money, and the state has now reversed its 2006 decision on OOXML. But it hasn’t changed the underlying problems. Imagine 30 years into the future, imagine your vital records are stored in proprietary formats that your local government can’t afford to license anymore. Now imagine your kid needs a copy of her birth certificate that can’t be accessed, because while the data is theoretically yours and the state’s, the vendor has been suing governments that read their file format without a license.

ooxml, open formats, free software, iso, standards, document formats, microsoft, tyranny, monopoly

Nicole Engard last month posted about The State of our ILS, describing the systems as:

I’d say it’s a like the crazy cousin you have to deal with because he’s family! It doesn’t fit, we are a very open IT environment, we have applications all over that need to talk to each other nicely and the [ILS] is a brick wall preventing us from getting the information we need and sending the information we’d like.

Nicole’s point about interoperability is well put, and the post is part of her preparation for conversation and discussion she hopes will go on at the American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting in July.

Coincidentally, I’ll be at AALL next month. My presentation will focus on the things we can do once we overcome the problems Nicole describes, but my concordance with her point should be clear (see previous posts one, two, three).

Extra: When will people who want to improve things not feel as though the ILS is against them, as in this post by Steve Lawson?

update: I keep forgetting to link to this public example of how bad our OPACs/ILSs are. Thanks go to David Walker for making me ROTFL.

AALL, American Association of Law Libraries, future libraries, ILS, interoperability, lib20, libraries, library 2.0, Nicole Engard, standards, Steve Lawson

As with all my other presentations, the my slides tell less than half the story, but I’ve posted them anyway. I’m told the audio was recorded, and there’s a chance that will help explain all this, but until then you’ll have to piece this all together from my previous writings, what little I’m about to offer here, and the slides (which, again, without the spoken component, probably do more to misdirect interested readers than answer questions).

My code4lib 2006 presentation included discussion not only of (WPopac, my open source OPAC based on WordPress, but also a plea for us within the libraries to look outside our community for practices and standards that are in use and supported by larger populations than we can ever hope for on our own. WPopac is one attempt at that, using an application that can already claim “hundreds of thousands” of current users and many thousands of developers. Amazon offers another example, boasting 140,000 registered developers of its API, making it the defacto standard for the exchange of bibliographic information online. Meanwhile, our community of programmers within libraries, which is far smaller than 1% of Amazon’s registered API users, must contend with dozens of metadata standards (MARC, MODS, METS, DC, etc., etc., etc.) and communication interfaces (SRU/SRW, z39.50, and more) to do substantially similar work.

I’ve talked about this before (here, here, here, and here, among others), and I’ll be talking about it more yet. Most exciting for me, I wasn’t alone in my plea, as Art Rhyno made some great points about how our acquisitions and accounting processes are substantially similar to what’s called ERP in the outside world.

library, libraries, standards, wpopac, code4lib, presentation, great wall of standards, population density, sustainable development, sustainability, programmers, coders, developers, isolation, future libraries, library 2.0

I can’t help but like microformats, and part of that comes from the dogmatic principles that drive them. Among those is the notion that none of us should attempt to create a format out of whole cloth. Here’s how they explain it:

Under the title of “Propose a Microformat” they tell us: “Actually, DON’T!!!”

ask yourself: “are there any well established, interoperably implemented standards we can look at which address this problem?”

Why? The dogma here is to “pave the cowpaths:”

It’s quite possible [...] that you’ll find someone else who has dealt with the problem you’re addressing. Perhaps even solved it. Do your best to open a dialog with others who have encountered the same problem. We don’t want to build walls between competing communities — we want people to work together to develop a good solution which will cover the majority of cases.

Now think about this in the context of libraries. Think about it in terms of our acquisitions workflow, think about it in terms of our online catalogs. Break down the walls that divide libraries from the rest of the world, look for and embrace larger standards, and benefit from the community of work that already supports them.

microformat, dogma, lessons, software development, standards, interoperability

I couldn’t say it, but Alexander Johannesen could: libraries are the last bastions of the “not invented here syndrome” (scroll down just a bit, you’ll find it).

Between Alex’s post and mine, I don’t think there’s much to say except this: there may be five programmers in the world who know how to work with Z39.50, but several thousand who can build an Amazon API-based application in 15 minutes. What technology do you want to bet on?

library, libraries, standards, not invented here, z39.50, Alexander Johannesen, library standards, data interchange, networked information