Subject: [CODE4LIB] Job Opportunity

From: Kevin Reiss <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:36:15 -0700

Hi,

We just posted this open position. The position is located at the CUNY Offices on 555 West 57th Street in Manhattan. If you've got any questions about it feel free to contact me off-list. 

http://portal.cuny.edu/cms/id/cuny/documents/jobposting/JobPostingManagerialandProfessional/028665.htm#P-11_0

Kevin Reiss
University Systems Librarian
The Office of Library 
Services [http://ols.cuny.edu/]
The City University of New York
555 West 57th Street, Suite 1140, 
Room 1140
[email-masked]
Tel: 
646.758.7885

---

From: Jonathan Rochkind <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:46:29 -0400

As I think about the award idea more, I still don't really like it. 
(Sorry Eric!).

Some comments at 
http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/why-i-dont-like-the-code4lib-code-award-idea/

With a shorter version below (thanks Jodi).

The award will inevitably be seen as an endorsement of the awarded 
project by ‘Code4Lib.’ While some supporters say this is not the 
intention, I’ve also seen supporters say the reason they want the 
Code4Lib name on it is so the award will have more prestige. To me, this 
implies that an implied endorsement in fact is part of the idea: What 
else would this prestige be for? But whether it’s intentional or not, 
it’s inevitable.

The Code4Lib community has indeed garnered a fair amount of prestige 
lately, including by people who don’t really understand the informal and 
non-official nature of Code4Lib. I’ve seen Code4Lib erroneously referred 
to as an ‘organization’ several times. Much of this audience will see 
such an award as an endorsement of the project awarded, by the 
prestigious ‘Code4Lib’.

But I don’t think Code4Lib actually has the capacity to accurately and 
useful determine value of an open source project.

Libraries need to learn how to evaluate open source projects on their 
own, for their own circumstances and needs. Libraries, always on the 
look-out for shortcuts, are going to be really tempted to use a Code4Lib 
award as a shortcut to their own investigation. If it’s awarded by 
Code4Lib, it must be good. I worry about anything that discourages 
libraries from the hard work of developing their own capacity to 
evaluate projects; and I also worry about such an implied endorsement 
actually steering them wrong because I don’t think we have the capacity 
to reliably make such universally applicable evaluations as a community. 
Sure, the award won’t be intended as such, but it will be read as such.

I would actually love to see a regular “notable project review” feature 
in the Code4Lib Journal, perhaps in every issue. This could cover only 
articles that the reviewers thought were exceptionally good, or it could 
cover any project of note.

And reviews would have particular reviewer’s bylines attached, making it 
clear who was doing the evaluation, and discouraging the reader from 
thinking it’s the “Code4Lib community”, which isn’t capable of speaking 
with one voice anyway (nor do we desire it to).

If the goal of the idea is to inject some money into library-domain open 
source software development, than rather than an award with 
compenstaion, I think the money could more effectively be spent funding 
an internship or some kind.

Perhaps something like Google Summer of Code. Give a stipend to some 
library student (or currently un- or under-employed Code4Libber, but I 
like the idea of getting library students involved as bonus) to work on 
a Code4Lib community project. Perhaps the community could vote on which 
project(s) were eligible for such an internship, and then people could 
apply expressing their interests, and a smaller committee would actually 
match an intern with a project.

---

From: Joe Atzberger <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:39:02 -0400

I appreciate Jonathan sounding out the arguments against the proposed form
of the award, and offering some alternatives.  In short, I think I agree
with him.

I was at Karen's "OSS Metrics" breakout session, and had a lot of
reservations about the "output" of the session, even though the discussion
there was interesting and well-intentioned.  It comes down to the two
decision-making processes: the internal c4l one for making the award and the
external one(s) being influenced by it.

We were listing criteria one might use to evaluate a given project.  And it
was a good enough list of issues, but I kept thinking that it was bound to
fail if it were a scorecard to be used *comparatively* between otherwise
heterogeneous projects on different platforms, in different environments,
with different purposes, etc.  I wasn't even confident of our ability to
review one individual criteria like "security" for a given project, let
alone amongst all projects.  For the amount of work and expertise it would
take to evaluate that honestly, we could be contributing *fixes* to even the
"lesser" projects.

But I'll put aside the question of how accurately we could pick amongst
totally diverse projects.  Pretend we could.  I don't think we could
communicate the objective context to the external decision makers who would
consider themselves informed by the mere fact of the award.

The Journal featuring a project has none of these problems, because it can
maintain context.  Like "Is this project useful to archivists in major
institutions?" or "Is this OSS project a good alternative to a different
proprietary software X?"

I also like the role of code4lib being more of a contributer and less of an
arbiter.  If the goal is to benefit the cool projects, keep the money, show
me the code.

--Joe Atzberger,
LibLime

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <[email-masked]>wrote:

> As I think about the award idea more, I still don't really like it. (Sorry
> Eric!).
>
> Some comments at
> The award will inevitably be seen as an endorsement of the awarded project
> by ‘Code4Lib.’ While some supporters say this is not the intention, I’ve
> also seen supporters say the reason they want the Code4Lib name on it is so
> the award will have more prestige. To me, this implies that an implied
> endorsement in fact is part of the idea: What else would this prestige be
> for? But whether it’s intentional or not, it’s inevitable.
>
> non-official nature of Code4Lib. I’ve seen Code4Lib erroneously referred to
> as an ‘organization’ several times. Much of this audience will see such an
> award as an endorsement of the project awarded, by the prestigious
> ‘Code4Lib’.
>
> Libraries need to learn how to evaluate open source projects on their own,
> for their own circumstances and needs. Libraries, always on the look-out for
> shortcuts, are going to be really tempted to use a Code4Lib award as a
> shortcut to their own investigation. If it’s awarded by Code4Lib, it must be
> good. I worry about anything that discourages libraries from the hard work
> of developing their own capacity to evaluate projects; and I also worry
> about such an implied endorsement actually steering them wrong because I
> don’t think we have the capacity to reliably make such universally
> applicable evaluations as a community. Sure, the award won’t be intended as
> such, but it will be read as such.
>
> I would actually love to see a regular “notable project review” feature in
> the Code4Lib Journal, perhaps in every issue. This could cover only articles
> that the reviewers thought were exceptionally good, or it could cover any
> project of note.
>
> thinking it’s the “Code4Lib community”, which isn’t capable of speaking with
> one voice anyway (nor do we desire it to).
>
> source software development, than rather than an award with compenstaion, I
> think the money could more effectively be spent funding an internship or
> some kind.
>
> library student (or currently un- or under-employed Code4Libber, but I like
> the idea of getting library students involved as bonus) to work on a
> Code4Lib community project. Perhaps the community could vote on which
> project(s) were eligible for such an internship, and then people could apply
> expressing their interests, and a smaller committee would actually match an
> intern with a project.
>

---

From: Karen Schneider <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:01:01 -0400

In fairness to the breakout session -- and to the issue of measurement in
general -- the point of the session wasn't to create some sort of magic
omnibus checklist (though the conversation kept drifting in that direction
and I kept pulling it back). In fact, if you look at the notes for the
breakout session, they are very reasonable questions to ask about any
software, open source or otherwise. Even if you look at one software program
and no other, they are still very sensible questions to ask, and I wish
people asked them more often. The metrics on that list certainly didn't come
out of a vacuum.

Having said that, I agree with Joe about his reservations with scorecards in
general, and I agree with Jonathan about associating the loose entity of
"Code4Lib" with an award that broad. I also worry about an award in the
context of such a small development community.

I could see something like "new app with the most potential for Z" or "most
interesting new floomajabbie for resolving the issue of X."

-- 
-- 
| Karen G. Schneider
| Community Librarian
| Equinox Software Inc. "The Evergreen Experts"
| Toll-free: 1.877.Open.ILS (1.877.673.6457) x712
| [email-masked]
| Web: http://www.esilibrary.com
| Be a part of the Evergreen International Conference, May 20-22, 2009!
| http://www.solinet.net/evergreen

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Joe Atzberger <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <[email-masked]
> >wrote:
>
> (Sorry
> project
> to
> own,
> in
> with
> like
> apply