MSU had an IT conference this week. The keynote session, “Leading Beyond the IT Conundrums for Scholarship 2.0,” by Bradley Wheeler at Indiana University brought up one point that I was particularly taken with regarding (what he called) Commercial Coordination (with closed intellectual property) and Partner Coordination (with open intellectual property). Commercial solutions bundle the software and support where partner solutions (ie, open source software) do not. You can choose to have a commercial support option for open source software – but the key is that they are separate. He suggested that we need to move toward partner coordination and open source solutions.

In one of the questions after his presentation, someone asked how they decided between open source software and commercial products since they use both at Indiana University. I loved his answer. He said that using an open source product or partner coordination really matters the most when it deals with something unique or particularly important to your organization. For example, they are involved in the Sakai project (open source course management software) and the Kuali project (open source administrative software for higher education institutions).

I think this approach is significant for libraries too. This directory of open source software for libraries lists many projects that address needs unique to our organizations and environment.