Comparison of technical support for open source software versus proprietary software

Abstract

In this poster proposal we present results from an IMLS funded research project to compare technical support for open source software with proprietary software for Integrated Library Systems (ILS). The complete research project is being carried in three phases over a period of three years, in this poster we present the overall project plan and the results from the first phase of research. The poster describes the project approach by presenting the complete project plan and presents results from two survey conducted to identify expectations of librarians for technical support of the ILS that they use and then second survey was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the current technical support methods in solving the technical problems faced by librarians.