[Koha] Perceptions 2009: An International Survey of Library Automation

[Breeding, Marshall]

I have done all that I can to make the survey transparent as possible.  I don't think that you will find many other examples of surveys that provide the tools that I do to make the results available in the most open way reasonable.  I do not reveal the responses of the individual libraries, but can you point to any other survey that publishes data in a way that exposes responses in that way?  I really don't think that libraries would be candid if they knew that their responses would be made public.  I do provide the summaries of the responses in a way that anyone can check the validity of the statistics. 

In lib-web-cats each organization that provides Koha support can have the libraries with which they have contracts coded accordingly.  I could have aggregated all of the libraries responding to the survey into a single statistical unit;  this aggregate score would have been pretty low.  

I hope that the survey provides some measure of library perceptions and attitudes toward their ILS products and organizations involved.  This is the library's chance to have their voices heard.  It may not always be what the companies want to hear.

I do appreciate your comments and the concerns you express.  I want this to be a survey that everyone believes is done in a fair and unbiased way.

-marshall


 

-----Original Message-----
From: koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz [mailto:koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of MJ Ray
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 6:30 PM
To: Nicole Engard
Cc: Koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
Subject: Re: [Koha] Perceptions 2009: An International Survey of Library Automation

Nicole Engard <nengard at gmail.com>
> Marshall Breeding has published his annual Library Automation
> Perceptions Report:
> http://www.librarytechnology.org/perceptions2009.pl  Koha came out
> pretty darn well when independently hosted.  What I'm surprised about
> is that the non-US Koha support companies are missing. This means that
> next year we need to get more international Koha libraries to answer
> the survey!!

Some already answer, but they were classified as Koha -- Independent
even when they are hosted by us (and not just us installing and/or
supporting their server).

The big problem I have with that survey is that libraries give
Marshall Breeding their data, but the survey results are not given
back under any free and open source software terms.  It seems rather
unjust to ask librarians to spend their time on something unequal
like that, doesn't it?

Hope that explains,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)  Webmaster and LMS developer at     | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op
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