foreign
[Music]
lovely welcome to Swiss Army Glam with
Tara Barnett Tara is a librarian and
folio Services Analyst at index data
working with folio customers and the
folio Community today Tara is going to
explain why the future of libraries is
open please welcome Tara
[Applause]
all right oh I can hear myself so it's
great
um all right so
I begin today by acknowledging the
warungary warung people of the kulin
nation traditional custodians of the
land on which We Gather today and pay my
respects to their Elders past and
present I extend that respect to
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples here today
so hi I'm Tara and I am a folio Services
analyst with index data I'm also a
librarian and an author and an Iron Man
believe it or not
so thanks so much for joining me today
for this weirdly titled presentation on
folio so who here actually knows what
folio is
oh I see two hands that's better than I
thought I was gonna do that's great
um so just to set a baseline which I
will totally destroy over the next 40
minutes
um here's what folio really is in the
most basic sense
um to most actual Library users folio is
just a piece of software that you use to
run your library right
there are a few features of folio that
make it special but really to the people
who do day-to-day work it's not that
different from any other Library System
except it kind of is and the reason it
is special is because it is open
so folio stands for the future of
libraries is open and hopefully that
means that everything I'm about to say
is inherently interesting to the people
in this room
folio is pretty much defined by its
openness not only is it open source it's
an open Community as well
um to be honest I really really
struggled with how to talk about folio
as an open source software at this
conference because it's such a massive
topic and there are so many people
better qualified than me who could be
here talking to you today about folio
such as my boss Sebastian Hammer who is
an amazing incredible open source
Advocate and like literally a million
times more experience than me or
literally any of the developers that I
work with at index data could have given
you an amazing presentation on the
technical choices that make folio a
really interesting open source product
or our community advocate Peter Murray
who I stole half of these slides from
let's just say I feel like I was an
unlikely choice to present on folio
but the thing about folio is it belongs
to everyone who is involved in the
project and I may not be the most senior
or the most technical person who works
with folio but I am a part of this
project in addition to helping libraries
like kaval here in Australia get live on
folio and training and supporting
libraries on folio I also for example
run the folio implementers Group which
is sort of a support group for newbie
libraries that are getting running on
folio
and where they can ask questions that
don't fit anywhere else so who's to say
that my perspective on folio is less
than anyone else's just because I'm a
user
so as I mentioned I'm also a writer I
write young adult books and there's a
pretty well known piece of advice which
is write the story only you could tell
and it's been said by like a million
people but I'm pretty sure like 90 of
them are just riffing off this Neil game
unquote so I'm going to present to you
the presentation only I can present
which is a presentation from the ground
because my job and in the community I
mainly work with actual users who are
getting up to speed on folio and I hope
that if you do have technical questions
or you do specific things that you want
to learn that I don't talk about that
you'll reach out and I can put you in
touch with the right people if I'm not
the right person
speaking of books and I swear this is
relevant while I was working on this
presentation I also read this book which
is just amazing it's basically about
underground spaces and caving but
there's this amazing quote in there
where the author is talking to someone
named Merlin sheldrake and he talks
about how for every very polished
hypothesis evidence proof paper that he
writes he also wants to write its dark
twin it's underground mirror piece the
true story underlying the Tidy Narrative
of hypothesis evidence proof and I
really like that idea particularly if
we're talking about the idealism in
folio as an open source collaboration
versus the slight messiness of the
actual work
so today as promised I'm going to
provide you with a presentation on folio
entitled Swiss Army Glam as it says on
your schedule we're going to talk about
the folio ILS the folio community and
folio users exploring the space where
the three meet and the challenges of
working in an open environment but I
will also be occasionally interjecting
this powerpoint's underground mirror
piece it's dark twin
so again to reintroduce myself I'm Tara
and I'm an analyst and a librarian and
an author and an Iron Man and I'm here
to talk to you about folio today from
both sides of the mirror
so
what is folio really
according to the website folio is an
open source project that aims to
reimagine library software through a
unique collaboration of libraries
developers and vendors it moves beyond
the traditional Library management
system to a new paradigm where apps are
built on an open platform providing
libraries more choice and delivering new
services to users ooh
I'm not even going to get an uh for that
one okay to which we might say cool so
what is it
that's understandable so the reason it
can be a little challenging to
understand what folio is is that we're
often talking about a bunch of different
things when we're when we say folio so
we're talking about a project and we're
talking about a piece of software and
sometimes we're talking about a platform
on which smaller pieces of software run
sometimes we're talking about the
community honestly to this day I am not
sure how many definitions of folio there
actually are
So today we're actually going to be
focusing mostly on what I would call the
folio community and the folio users but
in order to do that I need to tell you
at least a little bit about folio as an
ILS so that we have a general sense of
why that's important
okay so what is the folio ILS and before
we go any further I was hoping I could
ask a really basic question and I bet I
know the answer who here knows what the
terms ILS LMS and LSP mean
and get those two hands back up there oh
wait okay we got slightly more hands oh
I had a shaky hand okay so when I ask
that question when I do library
trainings I get a lot of like well uh
it's an ILS or
um they'll say like and ILS is Sierra or
Alma or aleph right it is that it is and
ILS is so important to libraries that
it's basically a tautology to most users
because it's where we do all of our work
but for non-library people that's not
super useful as a definition so if
you've never worked in a library and ILS
is the system that runs pretty much the
whole Library it holds your inventory it
gives you the ability to circulate that
inventory to patrons it lets you buy
stuff and track how much you bought it
integrates with other systems it lets
you catalog your stuff
and then we have this other term which
is LSP which is a new and totally
separate thing but it's actually pretty
much the exact same thing but with
e-resources
um it's actually a little more
complicated than that and hopefully LSP
means something really specific in the
folio Community but that is like a whole
other 45 minute presentation we will not
be getting into today
so yeah I realize if you are not a
library person this is still not super
helpful so hold on to your hats
this is folio
Tada wait I got a Tata okay we're doing
pretty good so folio looks like this
and folio is made up of apps and those
apps are all different but generally
they look kind of like this so this is
our inventory app it's what holds you
know all the stuff that you own
it can also look like this this is the
ldp app which is awesome because it's
for reporting it's my favorite app I do
have favorites every app serves a very
narrow purpose so rather than have an
app for circulation we have apps for
check in and checkout and keeping apps
super narrow is an important part of
folio's design most workflows that users
complete in folio will involve moving
between multiple apps
um so I I had hoped to very quickly show
you folio working live because like as a
trainer it's like Unthinkable to me to
give a presentation on folio and not
actually show it to you so this is what
folio looks like and what we saw in
those screenshots were these apps up
here so these are all of the apps and
folios and we've got even more here
um and each of these haps have a really
narrow workflow so for example this is
that inventory app that we saw that
hopefully is going to work for me
we can search an inventory
we can look at an item in inventory we
can copy that item's barcode and let's
just do something in folio so we've got
a barcode maybe we want to check that
out to a user so I could scan a user's
barcode bring up the user's record oh
look it's me
check out the item
right and so this is us doing our work
moving through apps in folio that's what
folio is
so who knows what an ILS is now
really oh wait we got an extra hand okay
all right
I reached one what more can you ask for
where is my mouse
there we go
all right
so if you want to see more folio or see
how folio applies to your area if you
are a library person you can actually
log in yourself and go exploring you can
log in at that address that's the
username and password and you can put
whatever you want in there it's
refreshed every night you can't hurt it
it's awesome
so folio is just an ILS but there are a
few things that make it special and one
of those things is folio's history why
folio exists at all
so this is a massive oversimplification
but basically it used to be the case
that there were many ILS options
available but over time through mergers
and Acquisitions there are not a whole
lot of options left especially for big
libraries with complex needs in addition
to that type of consolidation which is
called horizontal consolidation there's
also vertical consolidation which for
libraries is where the folks who sell
you the content also own the ILS and
that is bad that is not great generally
agreed to be not awesome for libraries
um so a bunch of libraries did not like
that and they decided to make folio
folio was launched in 2015-16 as a
collaboration between index data where I
work ebsco and Olay which is the open
Library environment and that was kind of
like an open source ancestor of folios
right from the start it was designed to
encourage Innovation and to serve the
entire spectrum of current and future
needs of libraries folio was designed to
be modern and open source and extensible
and Community Based the first libraries
went live in 2019 and at this point
there are over 60 libraries worldwide
using the system the Library of Congress
picked folio as their ILS in 2022 and
obviously we have a couple of friends in
Australia now as well
all of this happened well before I
joined the project I joined the project
in 2022 and one of the first things I
heard about was that the Library of
Congress was considering folio that's
sort of when I came on and one thing
that's interesting about coming to folio
late
um like me is that many people who have
been with the folio project sort of from
the beginning are still around and they
have that actual lived experience of
that original Mission of folio
by the time I came to folio it was
already a functional enough product that
I could be like annoyed with it right
and that in itself is kind of miraculous
like it sprang into being and now it can
just be an irritating thing I have to
deal with
um you don't need to know the whole
history of ILS development in order to
understand folio but it does help when
you're trying to contextualize
conversations about folio that include
that history
another thing that makes folio different
as an ILS is that it has that app-based
design so going back to the ILS folio is
made up of apps I've covered that my
favorite app is ldp and each of those
squares up there represents an app
Foley was an open platform that provides
an environment in which modules run and
as long as you can make an app that fits
into the folio framework anyone can come
along and make a new app it doesn't even
necessarily need to be sort of a
traditional Library app you could for
example make an app that handles
timesheets right if that was something
that your library needed anyone can come
build new apps and replace the existing
ones and to be clear that is very
different from how other systems have
functioned in the past other
module-based systems like if you're
familiar with Library software might
look superficially the same but in
general you can't take a chunk out of
most ils's and just replace them with
your own parts
and folio does work it works well enough
that 60 very real libraries including
some big names in the academic sphere
are running a library on folio but folio
is not done and it will never be done
and the ways in which it is not finished
can be painful for libraries who are on
fully of today as tools get refined and
added things get better but there are
some unresolved areas needing
development that real users find very
challenging and just build a better app
if you need it is not something that
most libraries are realistically
equipped to do right now some do that's
true and it's awesome but like anything
at open source that requires resources
and those resources are always in short
supply
so we're on we're on this side with a
little Swiss Army knife
that said you can actually build a lot
you can actually build out a lot of
functionality in folio using apis one of
the coolest things to me about folio is
that almost anything that you can do in
the UI you can actually do directly with
apis as well and that's by Design and
folio users have built some really cool
stuff that's technically outside of
folio so that includes tools to load
invoices tools to test circulation rules
tools to load users or move settings
between environments
um and every time I see one of these API
based Solutions I get really excited
because they are usually such small
projects right they're such small needs
they're really targeted to fit the needs
of one person or one library and I just
love that someone looked at an
inefficiency and they opened up their
laptop and they just wrote it right
sometimes it's people who are just
learning to code as well my favorite
channel on the folio slack is actually
learning apis I have a favorite Channel
as well
that kind of direct action just makes me
so incredibly happy it's one of the
really cool things about working with
folio
but
cool as that is what's not being said
there is that if you're doing something
with apis it's probably because that
functionality is not yet built into
folio apis are sometimes used like
little Band-Aids in the folio Community
which is on the one hand really cool and
kind of challenges our definition of
what the boundaries of folio are but on
the other hand it's not great for users
who are not comfortable with even basic
processes with an API
but this is the most important point for
our story today your ILS is where all of
your library's work happens and your ILS
is really important that one extra
keystroke that you have to make in a
circulation transaction is a keystroke
that you will have to make like 70
billion times that is how much work we
do in the ILS
that's the kind of Reliance that
libraries have on this system another
way that you can tell how important the
ILS is is that if it goes down the the
library basically stops running
um so even if you don't quite follow
what an ILS does let's all just agree
that the design of an ILS is super
important to the people who work in
libraries
we're all on board that okay
all right so now that we know literally
what folio is now we can talk about the
folio community
so what is the folio Community what does
that mean
the folio Community is anyone who is
involved with folio the folio Community
made folio and the folio Community is
the collectivity that moves the project
forward folio isn't just open source
it's also an open Community anyone can
join and anyone who joins can have a
voice in the direction of folio
the community is made up of subject
matter experts which are called smes
which is not a term I had heard before
working with folio and I find ridiculous
it also includes developers user
experience designers and product owners
some of those people work in libraries
other people like me work as vendors in
libraries we basically call everyone who
isn't a library a vendor if a library
exchanges money with you you're probably
a vendor it's really weird to be a
former Library employee
um who who now works as a vendor
especially in an open source context
it's kind of like joining the dark side
um people make that joke to me all the
time every conference I've been to since
I started working at index data someone
has come up to me and welcomed me to the
dark side which is very weird and it's
especially weird because most other
people I talk to who are employed by
vendors in the folio Community are just
like me
they're former Library staff who wanted
to focus on something like training or
implementation and there aren't a lot of
jobs like that in libraries so you know
I try to be really upfront when I
interact with the community
um
about the fact that I work for a vendor
even though index data is pretty widely
regarded as being like good people I'm
pretty proud of that but that's why I
try to make sure I introduce myself as
Tara from index data because even though
vendors are really important to the
community and we are seen as players
we're also viewed as sort of suspicious
for reasons that I think are actually
kind of fair
which brings me to a weird observation
about how open source collaboration and
folio actually seems to work from my
perspective everyone in the folio
Community has multiple forms of
expertise and multiple ways of
participating people can be both product
owners and subject matter experts or
Librarians and vendors and it's all
basically like joyful chaos
but I really like seeing the places
where people who are leaders in some
areas become resources or experts in
others so like I mentioned that I'm
currently running the folio implementers
group and that position has a one-year
term and last year I was a participant
and this year I'm in charge and I took a
lot of inspiration from the person who
ran the group before me but I also get
to make it my own
there are just so many ways to step up
and engage that there are opportunities
for everyone in the folio community
I'm sure you saw this slide coming that
said like any voluntary participation
some roles go unfulfilled for a long
time in particular there's a lack of
product owners and that lack is having a
real effect on some core functionality
without product owners there's no way to
move an app forward and that's one of
the dangers of relying on volunteers
so all of those people we just talked
about are organized into what the folio
project calls sigs special interest
groups or cigs they're topic based
groups that come together on slack
mostly to serve as the authority on
certain aspects of folio so for example
there's a resource access Sig that is
attended by all the ra smes
through special interest groups covering
different areas of expertise the
community Works directly with product
designers and development teams to
oversee the apps specific to their
interests with product and Technical
committees keeping the project oriented
in terms of strategic Direction and good
technical choices I believe that is how
they prefer to be explained
so sixth form consensus on folio
functionality through the creation of
use cases documents reactions to
prototypes and code Snippets they also
document existing functionality mostly
and contribute to user acceptance
testing and bug identification to ensure
functionality performs as specified Sig
serve as a forum for the product owners
subject matter experts developers and
end users to exchange ideas develop
shared goals for the folio project and
researched and develop new interchange
standards with widely used software
so basically six decide how the apps and
folio get made and maintained which is
pretty cool
and six can be really really powerful
because folio is designed in such a way
that we start with the user experience
design centering the needs of the end
users
in theory the design of folio happens
something like this so we discuss things
in sigs and things progressively become
more real right
note my use of in theory there though
in the early days of folio collaboration
in the sigs looked something like this
participation was pretty literal and
direct kind of Hands-On here
user experience designers took the ideas
and needs developed in the sigs and they
created sketches and then wireframes
which became prototypes so not working
on the side and then working code and
that's real folio over there and voila
we have an app
so obviously today if you want to make
work happen in folio you should join a
Sig and it will happen
you too can put Post-it notes on a wall
except actually being in a Sig can feel
more like this
six are important but they are also just
zoom meetings and slack channels they
have roles and they have duties but at
the end of the day they are places
filled with real people having real
arguments
talking through real problems and on the
ground in reality
that can be kind of boring and
frustrating and about as fun as a condo
meeting
maybe a thing that you have here I'm not
sure whatever condo meetings are
terrible okay
frustration with the sigs and with folio
governance in general is pretty common
in the folio community so these are just
a few quotes
about that I will not read them because
they are mean
but I think it helps that we the folio
Community know that it's real you might
think that I pulled those quotes from
some secret back Channel file I keep or
something but actually the folio
Community is very open about problems
within the folio Community all of the
comments you see here were collected
during an initiative Following last
year's wolf con and it's pretty easy to
see for yourself where the problems are
are slack channels are open and people
are they're kind but they do not pull
their punches on there
so what's important for our story today
is that the folio Community is what
makes folio happen everything that
happens in folio emerges out of that
open community and while the community
really values the direct interaction
with the project you can't get around
fact that democracy kind of sucks
sometimes
in general almost all of those
complaints can be summed up thusly
arguing with people lobbying for
features to be developed watching
someone with more money and more power
walk all over you is not fun it's also
not fun to be overruled and watch a
decision that you think is stupid get
made
but that is part of working together and
working together is something we value
even when it kind of sucks
Okay so we've talked about the ILS and
we've talked about the community but I
actually want to focus in on one aspect
of the community that I care about a lot
because I work with them which is the
users
and when I say users I mean the real
book in hand barcode scanner at the
ready slashing open the ill packages
users you can tell I came from access
services
so now of course or of course users are
a part of the community but in a lot of
cases end users can kind of feel like
the poor bleeding edge suckers who do to
their organization's choices got stuck
using folio before the features that
they really needed were developed
so when I talk about users versus the
community I'm talking about all the
people who use and interact with folio
and that includes Librarians heads of
departments systems and admin folks but
it also includes a lot of users that not
everyone thinks about or knows when you
think about who works in a library right
so when you think about a library you
usually think about
Librarians right obviously
in the United States tons of work in
libraries is actually done by
paraprofessionals which are people
without Library Science degrees I was
actually a paraprofessional for 15 years
before I got my library science degree
like six months ago
and a ton of work at a University
Library is also done by student workers
so one of the major considerations when
libraries are designing workflows is
whether or not an 18 year old with no
job experience working 10 hours a week
is going to be able to do the incredibly
specific workflow without making
mistakes and without really
understanding the bigger theoretical
picture that governs their work
those are all folio users as well and
some of those users feel like they might
be missing from the folio Community as
we imagine it
so if you touch folio day to day you're
part of the folio Community whether you
know it or not that's that's simply true
any user can find a bug or suggest a
feature and that can be reported upwards
even if the user themselves doesn't ever
interact with the folio community
directly
but I find that interesting because in
the folio Community we often hear
there's no barrier to entry or there are
no Gatekeepers we seem to be really
value direct action with good reason but
that vision of participation is just not
viable for many users at many
institutions participation takes time
and not everyone has the time to sit
through hours and hours of Sig meetings
libraries are notoriously understaffed
now more than ever so for many libraries
their main contact with the community is
through a vendor or through a senior or
technical member of their staff if you
go on folio slack which all of you can
do by the way you'll often see
representatives from index data or ebsco
or Bywater representing Library Problems
by proxy
and that is totally fine actually
that is in fact what many libraries want
and what they pay vendors for
they just want a product that works
but it makes me a little bit curious as
a former paraprofessional about those
missing voices
inequality doesn't disappear just
because folio opened the door it didn't
disappear just because we have this open
project there may be no Gatekeepers on
the folio side anyone in this room could
be on folio slack making a Ruckus in a
Sig meeting tomorrow it's totally
possible you should do it
but that's a little naive given how most
libraries work Library staff are not
volunteers they're employees and in
order for them to participate in the
folio Community they need to have time
allocated to that project that means
that someone in the library has to Value
their perspective enough to allocate
their time to the project so that their
perspective can be heard
they need to be seen by their own
institutions as worthy of telling their
own story and competent enough to
participate in those discussions
and that is not something that happens
at every Library
but if we believe in the idealistic
vision of a fully open folio we need to
be thinking about who is actually
selected to be in the room where
conversations are happening
technically open to everybody is not
good enough
so I wanted to talk about the challenges
that I specifically see in working with
an open source ILS for my kind of weird
vendory perspective if you were to ask
any user what challenges of working with
folio art you would get a totally
different answer someone in Technical
Services might tell you that there's
problems with data import and it's a
fatal issue someone in a more senior
role might point to the lack of
developers in the project but in my
day-to-day work I do direct supportive
libraries and a lot of training and so
what I see are a lot of on-the-ground
concerns that point to gaps between the
community and the product itself that
aren't quite full filled by my role as a
vendor in between
obviously there are tons of challenges
to go along with all the wonderful
things about working with folio but
these are three things that I run into
again and again and again
the first challenge is one that I am
sure most people here probably
understand all too well open source
software is not free
yeah
um obviously it takes resources to get
folio up and running but as I talked
about earlier time is also money even
libraries that pay a hosting provider
like index data to take care of all the
technical ways that open source software
is not free still tend to have
additional costs particularly if they've
bought into the open ethos and they want
to be real players in the community it
costs time to attend sick meetings it
costs time to participate and be heard
it takes time to write documentation
it takes time to participate in bug Fest
or other events
folio is much more participatory than
other ils's which is great and amazing
and why we're all here but you know it
costs time and therefore it costs money
and that's hard for management to
um to plan for
another challenge facing libraries
moving to folio is that features are
still in development and they always
will be and it's really hard thing to
handle when you're waiting for
functionality as an actual end user it
can be challenging in particular for
libraries to navigate the things that
their hosting provider can or will
control and the things that they can't
just because the software is open source
doesn't necessarily mean that we can
just reach in and tweak something on a
dime or you know even if we can maybe we
shouldn't
and then the last one is that
documentation is very hard to understand
in the folio project so
um folio has documentation that most
users would recognize as documentation
but it isn't very process oriented and
it isn't particularly deep it's easy to
figure out what particular Fields like
literal fields are meant for but how
you're actually supposed to do things in
folio sometimes requires talking to a
human when I think of documentation in
folio I think of like the whole messy
information landscape that is the
product of our communities work together
so like troubleshooting and folio can
involve a ton of disparate sources like
jira and a Wiki page and a slack
conversation in GitHub I cannot tell you
how many times I've had to hunt down the
answer for something that seems obvious
in like a thread on slack that's 10 Deep
um
it's taken me a year to have a reliable
search strategy that allows me to find
out if a behavior I'm seeing is a known
bug or if it's just how folio Works
um or whatever you know
that is really really hard for libraries
and I feel like it makes them
artificially dependent on the people who
actually know how to do that research
like me
so I don't have a Magic Bullet solution
to these problems and most of them are
way outside my domain but I do have a
couple of suggestions the first is that
I would recommend that Library
management have a really Frank
conversation about how exactly they are
going to allocate Library staff to
handfolio not just the implementation
but all of the things that go along with
it the most insightful thing I've ever
been told about library Mission planning
is is show me your budget and I'll show
you your values
right second I would recommend that all
Library staff get at least a crash
course in what open source is going to
mean to them and why the institution has
made this choice and when I say all
staff again I mean all the staff right
open source is sometimes a financial
choice but it's often more of a values
choice and that means those who will be
asked to make sacrifices have to
understand and buy into that mission for
the project to be successful
and then third no matter who you are no
matter what you're doing no matter how
small it is or what your role is please
if you learn how to do something and
it's not written down just write it down
and put it somewhere I can find it
so obviously folio is very interesting
for developers and for people who are
interested in open source generally and
for cool Librarians to do cool coding
projects
um
but I wanted to speak very briefly about
why open source matters for librarians
who don't code right
so my boss wrote a really good article
about the real value of Open Source and
one of the things that he said was that
the most Insidious rhetorical trap laid
by open naysayers is the notion that the
sole benefit of Open Source software is
that anyone can download the source code
and look at it and change it
he goes on to say that the most
important feature of Open Source
software is that it facilitates a
conversation between software creators
and users that is impossible to realize
in any other model
when I think about why folio being open
matters to me I think of this word which
is epistemicide it's a term that's been
used for some time in discussions of
colonialism but I encounter this word in
a lecture in library school by Beth
Patton
a really basic explanation of
epistemicide is that it's the killing
silencing Annihilation or devaluing of a
way of knowing
we've talked about how folio is where
all the work happens and how folio
emerges from the folio Community folio
is in a sense an expression of our ways
of knowing in code it's how we speak
what we're doing when we're doing
Library work
the fact that folio was built from our
knowledge up from our library needs up
by us really matters even if the end
product isn't radically different today
from other Library systems the fact that
folio can be extended to accommodate new
ways of knowing
and allow the coexistence of different
ways of knowing also matters we need
these structures in place so that we can
make space for the knowing of future
generations and all the diverse voices
to come
that is not something that we should
seed to any corporation that is
something that by definition we need to
co-own and protect in an open system
and that is why I think Librarians
should care about open source
because whether folio is good or bad
whether it's effective or not it is ours
and it is us we're the ones making these
things happen all the problems and all
the successes those are also us all the
people who've worked on folio before us
all the people who will in the future
they're part of folio as well and every
day no matter how many frustrations I
have with folio I'm excited to be a part
of the folio project no matter which
side of the mirror we're looking at
folio from everyone in folio understands
we are the project because the project
is open
thank you
thank you Tara that was great we've got
uh four minutes four or five minutes
left for questions are there any
questions yep
uh gonna try and keep this short a whole
lot of context cut out um but basically
so I am studying Library science myself
um and I am basically
um trying to catalog my entire
collection of books
um at home and one of the open source
Library softwares that I found was folio
um and when I when I had a look at the
documentation to try and like see if I
could get it running I found that I
didn't have the technical know-how to
actually do that and so I had to switch
to
um another system which had more
documentation
um but I'm still kind of keen about
foliers so
um what I suppose would be the best way
to get started as a team of essentially
one for a single tiny Library oh gosh
so I I think that one thing that's
really interesting about folio is that
it's possible to host folio by yourself
it is it is possible
um but most people find that it's not
viable because of the skills that are
needed right
um so I'm a I'm a pretty like for
Library people I'm pretty technical
not compared to the people who host
folio
um so yeah I mean if it's something
that's interesting to you I would start
by building the groundwork and the
skills that you would need to actually
do that and that's not going to start
with folio if you're curious about that
send me an email and I will tell you
more
[Music]
thank you for that question
sure Alden bring it over
I was just suggesting that perhaps
putting a it's just sitting putting a an
issue in on the folio project page or
whatever it's done to basically ask if
they'd be willing to create a Docker
image for you so you can simply just go
dock a run on your operating system of
choice which I have is Linux
cool idea yeah if you want to know a
really funny story so when I first
started at index data I didn't
understand that snapshot existed and I
was like totally Gunk how I was like I'm
gonna do everything myself and so I
managed to get I managed to follow the
documentation enough to bring folio up
on my laptop
um doing things I didn't understand and
then I told the devops people this and
they laughed at me because I was like I
was like I don't know the vagrant was a
word I used I don't know
um
like like how did you have enough memory
on your computer to do that I was like
what's memory
so yeah I mean I would I would
definitely start maybe a little better
than I did out of pure spite
so uh we have time for one yep
um just just like clarification question
like most libraries let people you know
the users in the sense of borrowers do
things like look up books maybe check
them out and stuff like that does that
you know maybe throw a kiosk or an
online interface is that stuff Link in
with folio as well yeah so are you
talking about sort of a folio like a
discovery layer for users so folio works
with multiple Discovery layers the one
that I'm most familiar with is viewfind
it's the one I like
um but yeah so so it's sort of like a
separate system so this is like your
staff people and then folio users
um or sorry your patrons get to see a
beautiful
um amazing you know browsing experience
all right we're out of time thank you
very much Tara
[Applause]