Needed: GNU/Linux intro course ideas

Mark Szidik szidikm@mlc.lib.mi.us
Wed, 17 Jan 2001 11:11:49 -0500 (EST)


On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, Sean wrote:

> What are these librarians going to be doing with it? Buying books for it
> or implementing it?

Good question.  This is for implementation, but I don't know how they
would put it to use.  I want to leave that open.

My goal for the first class is to simply generate awareness and
interest.

The salesmen and consultants that libraries run into are pushing
proprietary stuff.  Most are totally unaware of the beauty and freedom
of Open Source.  Not to mention the cost savings.  I think its time they
hear about it.

The attendees will be a diverse group - library directors to reference
to tech staff from public, corporate, medical and academic libraries.

This got started because there is a new commercial product out in
library land called WebExpress. It runs only on Solaris and Linux.  Our
staff have heard from librarians that they are afraid of it and want to
wait till there is an NT version.

<rant>
This is awful to hear since the product (written in Java) is installed
and completely administered from a web interface, so there is no
difference between platforms.  In general libraries get scared when they
hear unix or linux.  (Even though most of their library systems run some
flavor of unix.  The vendors try to hide the fact by creating Win
clients and complex admin menus and not giving shell access.)
</rant>


To summarize I am doing this to get librarians interested in Open
Source.  What they do with it is up to them. (of course I'll try to help
them figure it out).


-Mark