Ada Lovelace Day : Bess Sadler

Today is Ada Lovelace Day – an international day of blogging to  celebrate women in science and technology.

Last April I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days with Bess Sadler at the University of Virginia while I researched libraries that created their own Open Source Software. Bess was the Chief Architect for Blacklight, which the project home page describes as:

a free and open source ruby-on-rails based discovery interface (a.k.a. “next-generation catalog”) especially optimized for heterogeneous collections. You can use it as a library catalog, as a front end for a digital repository, or as a single-search interface to aggregate digital content that would otherwise be siloed.

This woman codes. And loves libraries. And tries to make a more balanced world where all people have access to information, not just people in rich nations.

Bess was a great host, inviting me to sit in on a library staff meeting about error reporting for Blacklight so that I could get a feel for how the product was being received and how the library staff regarded it. She also took me out to a Ruby on Rails night in a co-working space with pizza and wifi – not everyone’s idea of a fun night, but the normalness of just hanging out with everyone in front of a laptop was just what I needed at that point in my trip.

I was impressed by Bess’ very straightforward and clear view of what she does. Without being in any way dogmatic, she was so committed to Open Source as an effective and fair way for a community to pool assets. When I asked most of my research subjects about the positive aspects of open source for their projects, they often hesitated or qualified their answers with “but in this case it’s like this, but in this other case, it’s like this”. Almost without pause Bess was able to list all the advantages I had collected from literature, give concrete examples of how they applied with Blacklight,  and then more.

I was very struck by Bess’ belief that people in countries with means to develop software should be sharing this software with people in poorer nations. She described access to information – particularly information created and relative to a poorer country – as an essential resource and a right for people in that country. She pointed out that without tools to access and organise this information , or the abilty to afford subscriptions to databases with research produced by the country, then citizens were being denied a right that everyone deserves.

Bess told me the story of another remarkable woman in technology, Dorothy Eneya who worked as a systems librarian in Malawi. The University of Malawi had a proprietary library system , but no money to pay for further licenses. It was faced with shutting the system down and providing no circulation or discovery system for the University. Dorothy Eneya did not accept this. She was the driving force behind installing the Open Source library software, Koha.  This is the difference that Open Source can make to access to information in some countries.

Bess also told me about the work of EIFL.net, (Electronic Information for Libraries), an organisation in which she volunteered. It describes itself as an organisation that offers “range of programmes and services designed to enable access to knowledge for education, learning and research and access to knowledge for sustainable livelihoods“. Much of the work is library focused and working with libraries in developing and transitioning nations, with programmes like “Library in a Box” – a package of software that provides an Open Source solution for library automation. They help libraries pool their resources to acquire consortia pricing for online databases. They also promote professional knowledge exchange.

Bess also gave me a new way to communicate with librarians about Open Source software, and why not to expect it to be  “finished”. She likened development of a discovery layer to collection development. “You never get to a point when developing your collection where you can say “that’s it, we don’t need any more money, the collection is finished” – so why should you expect this of your discovery layer?”.

Personally, it was a delight to spend a couple of days with Bess Sadler. Professionally it was an inspiration to see a gifted coder who was able to work out how to use her skills effectively , communicate her passion and help me better realise why Open Source is important and worthwhile. Thank you, Bess.

Click icon to share

•