opensource alternatives to common commercial products

Although the introduction of this article is overly simplified in terms of the changes in library technology (I couldn’t help but laugh a little in a couple of places) , once you’re past that, the rest is a good little overview of some of the more popular opensource products. I’ve hotlinked and listed the products below, the article gives a more indepth overview.

The products are:
ubuntu (ms windows alternative based on linux)
firefox (web browser; ms internet explorer alternative)
openoffice (productivity suite with wordprocessing, presentation, and spreadsheets; ms office alternative)
thunderbird (e-mail + rss reader; ms outlook express alternative)
songbird ( media player; windows media player alternative?)
gimpshop (image editing; adobe photoshop alternative)
pdfcreator (pdf creator; adobe acrobat alternative)
Audacity (audio burning software)
avidemux (video creation)

Other stuff (web publishing, etc.):
wordpress
drupal
mediawiki and also twiki.

As far as libraries go, there is
koha
evergreen
vufind
liblime

I’ve talked a little about evergreen and vufind here. At home, I still run MS for the operating system and commercial stuff for my server; but then everything else is opensource or web based services (Firefox, gimp, ghostwriter+pdf, openoffice, etc.) Setting up these products on a small personal computer is fairly easy (really!). I’m not sure how that would translate to a large network, which could possibly be a hidden cost factor: installing these, configuring them as needed, and upgrading. Of course, admins already have to do that for any programs that they support. Training issues (oh the fun of trying to teach a group of web editors to use Drupal…) as well as potential security risks given the opensource nature would be other potential costs.

http://www.degreetutor.com/library/managing-expenses/open-source-library

Opensource ILS projects and how I learned to love the library catalog

okay, pardon the bad pun on dr. strangelove…

I’ve been following some of the opensource ils projects with interest. evergreen (launched by the Georgia Public Lib System), is still in heavy development. From my understanding it originally launched without acquisitions or serials checkin (eeks!) ; however from an upcoming presentation flyer it appears that acquisitions will launch or has launched very soon.
Anyhow, it’s an interesting project and I finally got around to checking out their wiki.

At one conference I attended, the evergreen presenters (truly it is trotted out at every possible opportunity) was demonstrating its ability to save searches as RSS feeds, which would then be updated.

Another project is scriblio, which is a wordpress installation that works in conjunction with a library catalog. Plymouth State Library is now using scriblio. You can read an article about here and see it in action here.

I couldn’t find an example of a Voyager library using scriblio, but I’m sure someone out there somewhere is using it.

Another interesting project is VUFind, which I’ve read will work with a Voyager library catalog. VUFind is touting itself as having the ability to search (and display) seamless results between the library catalog, digital collections, and institutional repositories. I like a lot about VUFind — very easy to read. I love the ability to pull out citation info (wonder if this works with EndNote?). Other features include faceted search results, citations in MLA or APA (not sure if other choices), tagging, commenting, reviewing, and oia syndication.

I couldn’t find RSS feed/search, but it would seem like that would be a feature (?)

Give the demo a whirl yourself. OR better yet… go see it used with a Voyager catalog.

George Mason University (a Voyager library) has a test installation up at
http://zoombox.gmu.edu/vufind/

Update: 9/12: test installation is not working. ;-(

For those who are interested, the MARC view/technical view is under the tab “Staff View”

To read more about the features of VuFind, check out VuFind’s website:
http://www.vufind.org/features.php

tag you’re it..

Here are a couple of swell ideas about tagging the library catalog. The first generates tags based upon subject headings from the catalog by using a particular table in the db.

http://www.daveyp.com/blog/index.php/archives/127/

and then there are user contributed tags:
http://tags.library.upenn.edu/

It seems that ajax is the magic.

Melvyl Recommender Project

 The Melvyl Recommender Project<http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/melvyl_recommender/>, whichexplored next-generation services for library catalogs, has reached itsconclusion. This project was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Popular commercial services such as Google, eBay, Amazon, and Netflixhave evolved quickly over the last decade to help people find what theywant, developing information retrieval strategies such as usefullyranked results, spelling correction, and recommendations. Librarycatalogs, in contrast, have changed little and are not well equipped tomeet changing needs and expectations.

The Melvyl Recommender Project explored methods and feasibility ofclosing this gap. An additional extension project to the MelvylRecommender Project carried out deeper explorations into the mostinteresting and promising questions raised during the original project,and to add obvious missing pieces of functionality. The principal areaof investigation was the impact of adding full-text objects to what hadpreviously been a metadata-only index.

Read all about the project here:

http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/melvyl_recommender/

Firefox extension to search library catalogs

http://www.libx.org/

LibX is a Firefox extension that provides direct access to your library’s resources.
LibX is an open source framework from which editions for specific libraries can be built.

…and here is what Ga State is doing with it…. Pretty cool, eh?

http://www.library.gsu.edu/news/index.asp?view=details&ID=9558&typeID=1

frbr

and just in case you can’t get enough of that hot topic in cataloging land (aka FRBR), here is the blog
FRBR

thanks to KR for the link.

More Cataloging Stuff

and some slightly controversial reading about catalogs:

Links below…

Karen Calhoun's report on the future of cataloging at LC:http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf

Thomas Mann's response:http://www.guild2910.org/AFSCMECalhounReviewREV.pdf

...and you know, catalogers need to work withmultiple metadata standards these days (duh...)http://libraryjournal.com/article/CA6321736.html