There is no virtue in being right

Dan Scott has just alerted us to an article in Information Technology and Libraries - it is called A Comparative Study of the OPACs of Koha, Evergreen and Voyager by Sharon Q. Yang and Melissa A. Hofmann.  Read it here if you're an ALA member or in your friendly library database if not.  Here's the thing, Dan points out many problems with the findings of the researchers in regard to the Evergreen OPAC.  Why the title of this post?   I have no doubt that Dan is right, but darn it all, lots of folks will read that article and come away with some wrong impressions of Evergreen and possibly Koha and Voyager too.  The article is published in a journal that lots of people respect, no matter how much we protest, it is very likely that many, many people will take it at face value.  Still, if you know Evergreen, or Koha or Voyager I encourage you to follow Dan's lead and check what Yang and Hoffmann have said.  Publish what you find on your blog or add comments to Dan's post.  Maybe go directly to the researchers if possible.  Let's not fall prey to poorly researched and reviewed articles to help us make our decisions.  Let's think for ourselves, let's figure it out for ourselves, let's be the darn information experts we're supposed to be.  If you've really done your homework and you choose a proprietary system over open source then good on ya.  But don't just read a few articles and then put out a traditional RFP that pretty much cuts open source out of your choices right off the bat.  I repeat, be your own information expert.