Howard County Library (HCL) is a well-funded suburban library system located outside of Washington, D.C. It has six branches, 250,000 titles, and approximately one million items. Its collection continues to grow rapidly. Circulation is about five million transactions per year. Impressively, active library users constitute about 50 percent of the library's service population, perhaps because the library has a strong commitment to providing the best possible customer experience.

In 1999, Brian Auger, deputy executive director of HCL, attended a demonstration of the Dynix Horizon integrated library system (ILS). One of the claims made at the demonstration was that future versions of the software would require only a Web browser to access all functions. At that time, HCL was using Windows NT on its public-access computers, and despite using Fortres 101 and a variety of configuration tweaks to secure the stations, it was still having significant problems with viruses and reliability. Workstations were frequently down or malfunctioning. Auger was intrigued by the idea that if Windows were not needed to run the library's ILS client, it might be possible to switch to a more secure and reliable operating system on the library's public workstations. “If that were true,” he said, “we would be able to eliminate all the problems inherent in maintaining multiple Windows operating systems–patches, drivers, and fixes–by simply migrating to a Linux client environment.”²

In early 2000, Luis Salazar joined the HCL staff as network engineer. Salazar had system administration experience with Solaris, Sun's Unix variant. For the fun of it and to keep his skills up, Salazar began to experiment with the Linux operating system. While Solaris and Linux have different source code, the utilities and the command line environment are quite similar. Soon he was thinking about how they could use Linux in the library.

Eventually, with Auger's support, he and Mike Ricksecker, network specialist at HCL, began working on their own Linux distribution called LuMix–Luis and Mike Linux. Initially, the idea was that the library would continue to maintain separate Windows NT machines for word processing stations. LuMix would be used only for Internet and catalog-access stations. The Firefox browser was the main user interface. There were limited applications. Users could download and view word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation content from the Internet using OpenOffice.org software. They could save to floppy disks (later thumb drives), and they could print. They were aided by the fact that the library had already taken steps to standardize its PC hardware. Salazar and Ricksecker report no troubles with hardware compatibility with the Dell PCs they were using; all the necessary drivers were already available.³

The first LuMix distribution went into production at HCL in 2003, first at one of the branches, then eventually in all of the Howard County locations. Library users seemed to like the new workstations–they were used constantly. “People came in and started using the browser,” Salazar said. “Most of the stuff they expected to do, like at an Internet café, they could do.”⁴ The library saw improvement in uptime for the public workstations using the new software. Security problems all but went away. “With the permissions in a Unix-type operating system, it's harder for people to install a program or make any changes like that,” said Salazar.⁵ Salazar and Ricksecker also configured the workstations so that they would reset by deleting all user files and returning to a known state whenever a user logged out. They also employed a timeout so if a customer just walked away, the system would, after five minutes, log out and reset automatically. According to Auger, this made it “so we didn't have to worry about the actual system being compromised in any way.”⁶ When he wrote about it in 2004, Auger estimated that the library had saved $35,000 by using LuMix and avoiding the upgrade to Windows XP and the cost of licensing third-party security software.⁷ Now that money could go into additional workstations for customers.

Still, there was an increasing demand for more workstations, particularly for more places to do word processing. In 2004, Salazar and Ricksecker began work on a second version of LuMix that would have a menu and more applications. This version would be designed to replace the dedicated Windows NT word processing stations.

Amy Begg De Groff joined HCL as head of the information technology (IT) department in 2005. Also in that year, a user survey showed that library customers were unhappy with the time limit the library placed on use of the word processing stations. It was clear that more word processing stations were needed, but the cost of developing and maintaining a custom Linux distribution was also apparent. The more applications and capabilities that Salazar and Ricksecker added, the more work was needed to keep the system up to date with security and bug patches and software updates.

The decision by HCL staff to stop development of LuMix and find a commercially supported Linux distribution was a difficult one. De Groff knew how proud her staff was of the work on LuMix. She wanted to keep Salazar or Ricksecker happy and didn't want to lose them, but they were spending a lot of time on development and maintenance of LuMix. “As we expanded what we wanted to offer,” De Groff said, “we were going to have more care and feeding to do.”⁸ Their success with LuMix had raised user expectations. “The moment customers sat at a computer, while they liked everything they had,” she said, “they also wanted more. ‘Why can't this computer do this? My computer at home can.’”⁹ So they began looking for alternatives. They tried out Userful DiscoverStation, now known as Userful Desktop. But they were not completely satisfied with the appearance of the user interface. In addition, while Userful's product is also based on a custom Linux distribution, it is not fully open source. It includes proprietary session and printing management tools that HCL didn't need. HCL IT staff members are proud of their work with open source software. They feel that they are contributing to the library community by showing how open source tools can be used to enhance the customer experience and use the library's community's funding more efficiently, so they were motivated to find a fully open source alternative.

It was Salazar who found the solution: Open Sense Solutions. Open Sense Solutions sells support and development services for a custom Linux distribution called Groovix, which is based on the Ubuntu Linux distribution. In Groovix they found a fully open source solution, and in Open Sense Solutions HCL gained a responsive vendor that would help create a workstation solution HCL's customers would like. With Mike Pardee from Open Sense, they created a Groovix distribution that is an all-in-one workstation solution. It fully supports Internet access, office productivity applications, video and audio playback, and games. Some staff members were not sure about the games at first, but according to De Groff, the customers love them.

As of December 2008, HCL has 307 public workstations running Groovix. Its current standard is a Dell GX270 with 1 GB of RAM. Most are bought either used or refurbished on eBay or from National Computer Distributors. According to De Groff, “The reason there aren't more machines is because there is no more space, because the cost of these machines is nominal. It's under $200.”¹⁰ Updates to the Groovix distribution are loaded automatically from servers at each branch by scripts that run when the machines are started. These servers also run Linux and cost about $1,000 each. Open Sense Solutions handles the software updates to the Groovix image and has been responsive to ideas from HCL for improvements to the system. The cost of subscribing to Open Sense Solutions’ support services is under $10,000 per year for all HCL's public workstations.

Indeed, HCL staff members describe the relationship with Open Sense Solutions as being more like a true partnership than most vendor/customer relationships. In 2006, Salazar wrote an application to monitor the workstations at each branch. Danny Bauman, the library's Web developer, later modified the application to a graphical display of each branch showing the location of each workstation. Now, you can look at a map and tell the status of each workstation by its color: green for on, red for off, and blue for printing. Open Sense Solutions has since added a version of the utility to its product line. Since everything supported by Open Sense is licensed as open source, the utility is available to anyone who wants it.

For the most part, HCL customers’ primary reaction to the Groovix workstations has been to use them. De Groff said that statistically, feedback was extremely positive. She notes that 80 percent of users didn't notice that they were running Groovix rather than Windows, 17 percent liked the change, and 3 percent “were confused because things were different.”¹¹

HCL has not stopped at installing open source software on its public and staff workstations. The library recently launched a new website that uses an internally developed content management system written by Bowman. The library plans to make that software available as open source. Next year, the library plans a migration from its current ILS solution of SirsiDynix Horizon with an AquaBrowser public catalog for discovery to the Koha ILS.

Under the direction of John Brice, the Meadville Public Library and Crawford County Federated Library System (CCFLS) in Pennsylvania has been utilizing open source tools for approximately ten years. In addition to running Linux on its public workstations, CCFLS has also been a major contributor to the Koha open source ILS and has migrated its ILS system to Koha. It currently employs a developer who has written a number of enhancements to its ILS and has also written a workstation management tool called libKi, which he has made available to other libraries as open source.¹⁶

Meadville Public Library is located in a small town of about 14,000, located in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania, about forty miles from Erie. The library has approximately 100,000 books and circulates 250,000 items annually. Meadville is the largest of the nine libraries that make up the Crawford County Federated Library System. In 1996, John Brice, director of the library and system administrator of CCFLS, had a friend and mentor who was a retired meteorology professor from Enbrel University. The professor was a fan of open source technology and the Linux operating system. “He really wanted to do a project with us, with that,” Brice said. ¹⁷ He was interested, but it wasn't until he had a problem to solve that his library started using Linux.

The problem that got him started was precipitated by a vendor that failed to come through with a promised solution to finish a project to connect seven of Brice's smaller libraries. Brice decided to see if the router could be created with Linux. It turned out that it could.

Shortly after that, Brice and Cindy Murdock, his systems librarian, were taking a class from another local professor. “We actually hired somebody at the beginning to train us on how to use Unix or Linux,” Brice said. “We actually hired a college professor to come in.” ¹⁸ For six weeks, they took classes and did a little homework, or Crawford did, anyway. Brice laughs when he recounts the story. “Cindy actually did the homework, so she learned more.” ¹⁹

At Meadville, the use of open source solutions accelerated quickly once the door was open. Since the solution devised for the router problem involved using the Linux Terminal Server Project software, or LTSP, Meadville was soon using that same software to set up terminal-based public workstations. Other projects soon followed. Within a few years, the firewall, Web server, e-mail server (for the whole of CCFLS), and acquisitions system were all open source. In 2006, CCFLS hired a programmer by the name of Kyle Hall to work on various projects for the libraries. This year, CCFLS began implementation of the Koha ILS throughout the library system. Hall has become a regular contributor of code to the Koha open source project and produced a number of Koha-related tools, including an off-line circulation system. CCFLS has also sponsored Koha development from LibLime, which is currently the largest vendor of Koha-related support services. Brice points that open source projects may not actually save money, but “When you're done, you actually own something that you can leverage in your infrastructure year after year after year, and there's no monthly or yearly payment to a vendor.” ²⁰

Besides Koha-related work, one of Hall's other development projects has been to create libKi, the kiosk software that CCFLS uses to manage its public workstations. The libKi software is described on SourceForge, where you can download it:

a multi-platform kiosk management system for public terminals and kiosks. The administration system is web-based for easy use from any operating system. The client runs on any operating system that has Gtk2 support.²¹

CCFLS has made a practice of reusing older hardware as LTSP terminals. But Meadville Public Library has also purchased low-power diskless terminals for at least one project. These come from DisklessWorkstations.com and cost about $200 each. Each contains a network card that is designed to allow the terminal to boot and to load its software off the LTSP server. “What is interesting is that I spent more money on the furniture and desk (it's a custom cherry table) than I did on the computer hardware. The overall cost of the complete project came in slightly more than a $1,000 a seat.” ²²

In addition to the PC-based LTSP terminals and diskless terminals, CCFLS also has a small number of stand-alone Linux PCs, Windows PCs, and one Mac. CCFLS public workstations are broken down at present as shown in table 4.