Our co-op has joined Book Industry Communication as an associate member, mainly in order to voice experiences of the Koha community and ourselves about RFID tag standardisation and related sustainable development. I want us to give the Free and Open Source Software library world and our charity and academic clients more input in developing this big change to libraries.
Even so, it wasn’t an easy decision to join. I still believe that RFID standards development would be better done in an open forum, but there doesn’t seem to be a perfect choice and I don’t think we can create one. BIC already has cross-sector support and seems much more open than the so-called “RFID Alliance”. Pragmatism was enough, this time, and so far BIC seems friendly and welcoming. I see that a larger service provider co-operative, OCLC (UK), is also a member, so hopefully that means it’s safe for co-ops.
I think most of the readers of this will be free software developers, koha users and/or members of other co-ops. So, I ask you, what do you think of this move? Leave me a comment on our blog – or email me if you prefer to keep it private.