Library Outreach

[Dan Shufelt]

When trying to get a library / business to adopt usage of Ubuntu based
distributions have you taken the time to show them what it is?  If not I
would be very interested in helping to determine needs and creating
either demo or a screen cast movie.

I think such materials would greatly improve adoption as potential users
could visually see how the OS could work for them.

It would also be nice to follow up with libraries that do adopt Ubuntu
so we can add references, success stories and technical support contacts
to whatever media is developed.
 
-- 
Best regards,

Dan Shufelt
Ubuntu- Pacific Northwest Team (PNWTeam)
dshufelt at gmail.com

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as
a nail." -Abraham Maslow


> Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 11:08:39 -0800
> From: "Corey Burger" <corey.burger at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Colorado Team: Library Outreach
> To: "Ubuntu local community team (LoCo) contacts"
> 	<loco-contacts at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Message-ID:
> 	<348bd6da0702061108j2b38a1cdp34665e8967968783 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> On 2/5/07, David Overcash <funnylookinhat at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Greetings from the Colorado community team!
> >
> > One of our team members recently suggested that we pursue local
> > libraries as points of conversion, and the goal was confirmed by our
> > team members in our most recent meeting.  We realized that we would
> > rather not re-invent the wheel and thought to ask you all first if
> any
> > of you have pursued this avenue of contact.  We are looking to
> convert
> > both kiosk computers and entire computer labs to Ubuntu, and
> providing
> > the necessary local support to get them on the right track.  Would
> > additional support be a good place to reference Canonical, or should
> > that stay in our court?
> 
> Putting on my Userful hat:
> 
> Just FYI, I used to be Sales for Userful (now I do marketing), selling
> a Fedora-based product called DiscoverStation to libraries. I have a
> customer in Colorado, Garfield County Public Library.
> 
> Selling to libraries is hard. Very hard. They have a nice combination
> of no money and no tech staff. Not the ideal situation for trying to
> get them to run Linux. The only libraries that run Linux are either
> Userful or have a tech in house that builds them their own distro.
> Beauregard Parish Library in LA does this, as they build White Box
> Enterprise Linux, and Howard County in Maryland just switched from
> their own distro, LiMux, to Groovix, an Ubuntu deriv.
> 
> Here is what I would recommend, and this is not because I want to sell
> more :). is to try and get Ubuntu into the libraries catalogue and
> then work slowly on getting one of the smaller libraries to adopt it.
> After all, Linux is very much a "rising tide lifts all boats"
> situation. Most Average Joes don't know the difference between this
> Linux and that Linux.
> 
> You also need something that is a one-disk, no configuration install.
> Edubuntu it almost there yet, but needs a few more public computing
> bits. I believe Scott Balneaves in Manitoba is working on this.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Corey

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