Heya Mates,

Here I am again at ALA 2011. This year I am tomcatting around consulting with other cats about the Open Source library software that I love to play with. Getting it to work is kinda like a game of cat and mouse but unlike dealing with commercial vendors, the librarian gets to be the Cat! Oh yeah mates, it's good to be the cat!

I feel right at home since the favorite saying around here is that "free software" is like "free kittens". Sure they are easy to aquire, trust me on that point. But free kittens are not really free. They take love and care. They need worm and flea medicine. They use truck loads of littler after eating moutains of kibbies, all jokes about lasagna eating marmalade fat cats aside. But, in the end, arn't they worth it?

So I just heard from Dulcie, who is keeping the colony together in my absense and guess what? We have a new addition to the clan! For a couple of months a new stray has shown up and started waiting in the bushes in the morning. As Dulcie walks her little Zombie kitten to school, this cat has been shadowing them in the bushes. Well, I just head that Dulcie has been sharing our kibbies with him and this morning when she looked around the colony, there he was, curled up on the outskirts of the tabbitarium waiting for food. But this time he killed a bird to share with her. She says it was laid out before him in offering. Great! another mouth to feed! At least he gets the idea of share and share alike.

Till next time, this is Duddie Foxclaw, reporting on resource sharing and open sources live from the American Library Association convention 2011