The Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative (MassLNC) is inviting vendors and developers to respond to a Request for Quotes (RFQ) to develop enhancements for the Evergreen ILS.

The RFQ is available on the MassLNC site at http://masslnc.org. The RFQ contains eight enhancement projects for Evergreen, but we invite respondents to provide quotes for one or any number of the projects outlined in the document.

All quotes should be submitted to the MassLNC office by 5 p.m. Wednesday, September 22, 2010. 

One of the major goals of the IMLS grant is the creation of resources that allow us to collaborate on new development. 

The purpose of RSCEL is as much about creating a thriving development community as it is creating a collaborative user community.  The one won't really go anywhere without the other.

So we have an RFP hitting the street in the next couple of weeks, on behalf of the grant, to develop a shared enhancement database where we can

• Enter new software and enhancement ideas
• Review them as a community
• Endorse or modify
• Prioritize
• Offer to contribute toward cost-sharing
• Convert the ideas into a specification format that a developer can easily work from
• Publish requests to the development community
• Track request progress

In "Makers", Kodak and Duracell are merging to form the conglomerate, "Kodacell".  The new company has wads of cash, but no products that anyone wants to buy anymore.  Sound familiar?

So an Eminent blogger, Suzanne Church, is hired by the CEO of Kodacell to move from Silicon Valley to the burned-out, bankrupted suburban strip-mall  wastelands of Florida and write about the new engineering exploits of two guys who specialize in scavenging the circuitry from piles of unsold Boogie-Woogie Elmo dolls and constructing innovative but useless technological inventions that sell well for a time, and have not yet been copied and undercut by overseas sweatshops.

To the CEO, Kodacell's future is innovation.  Recognizing that every product they create will have it's margins fully undercut by global competition within 6 months, the strategy for the company is innovation for innovation's sake.  Don't stick with an idea too long.  Come up with a new one before the old one is completely subsumed by more efficient world-wide copycat operations.

This theme should strike a warm chord in the restless heart of the library open source community.