Casey is awesome!!

The rights to my Library Technology Report on Open-Source Software for Libraries have reverted back to me, so I’m posting the text online under a CC-BY-SA license.

Make sure you bookmark, read and share this very handy guide!!

If you have a moment, please participate in this survey by Outsell regarding the use of open source software in libraries:

Outsell, Inc. (www.outsellinc.com) is conducting research on the use of open source software in libraries and information management functions. In particular, we are exploring the use or consideration of open source software in integrated library systems (ILS).

Open source software programs are created collaboratively. Users and developers are free to share and change open source programs. Open source software differs from proprietary software which does not allow its source code to be copied or customized by unauthorized users.

Examples of ILSs which are created with open source code are Koha or Evergreen. Examples of ILSs designed with proprietary software are those offered by SirsiDynix, Ex Libris, Inmagic, etc.

We appreciate your participation in this short survey. All participants will receive a summary of the research results. All responses are confidential.

Please note: the survey will close on August 26th at midnight Pacific Time.

You can find the survey here.

You can never have too many blogs on open source and libraries! That’s why you should subscribe to Howard County’s new Open Source blog.

Howard County Library finds open source software to be perfectly at home within the library profession - where access to information is free and unrestricted.

It has been added to my blogroll!

The Earl Gregg Swem Library is proud to announce the release of it’s Facebook application, Swem Tools to the open source community. Released under the Apache 2.0 license, the project, Facebook Athenaeum (http://code.google.com/p/facebook-athenaeum), allows libraries to quickly develop and customize a Facebook application that provides a searching interface for a library’s catalog, website, databases, or any other search target, pull RSS feeds, and provide users with the ability to show friends their location in the library.

Requirements for the application are relatively light. A set of floor plans in image form, a database compatible with the Pear DB package (MySQL, MSSQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc), and PHP 5.

If you’re interested, check out the code. Any comments, questions, etc. can be posted at one of the Google groups (http://groups.google.com/group/facebook-athenaeum-users and http://groups.google.com/group/facebook-athenaeum-tech).

Awesome!! This found via Code4Lib.

Tim Spalding at LibraryThing is calling librarians to help him develop an open source alternative to Dewey:

I hereby invite you to help build the Open Shelves Classification (OSC), a free, “humble,” modern, open-source, crowd-sourced replacement for the Dewey Decimal System.

I’ve been speaking of doing something like this for a while, but I think it’s finally going to become a reality. LibraryThing members are into it and after my ALA panel talk, a number of catalogers expressed interest too. Best of all, one library director has signed on as eager to implement the system, when it comes available. Hey, one’s a start!

The Call. I am looking for one-to-five librarians willing to take leadership on the project. LibraryThing is willing to write the (fairly minimal) code necessary, but not to lead it.

As leaders, you will be “in charge” of the project only as a facilitator and executor of a consensus. Like Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, your influence will depend on listening to others and exercising minimal direct power.

For a smart, newly-minted librarian, this could be a big opportunity. You won’t be paid anything, but, hey, there’s probably a paper or two in it, right?

Why it’s necessary. The Dewey Decimal System® was great for its time, but it’s outlived that. Libraries today should not be constrained by the mental models of the 1870s, doomed to tinker with an increasingly irrelevant system. Nor should they be forced into a proprietary system—copyrighted, trademarked and licensed by a single entity—expensive to adopt and encumbered by restrictions on publishing detailed schedules or coordinating necessary changes.

In recent years, a number of efforts have been made to discard Dewey in favor of other systems, such as BISAC, the “bookstore system.” But none have proved good enough for widespread adoption, and license issues remain.

Read the entire call.

This news via oss4lib:

Horowhenua Library Trust and Katipo Communications in New Zealand are pleased to annouce the release of Kete Version 1.0.

Kete provides a platform for developing community contributed content. It allows uploading of different types of content: topics (html text based content), documents, audio files, images, movies and links. Kete is the māori word for basket, in the Kete system a basket is the overall organising structure for content. Beyond baskets content is organised by the community using tagging and relating pieces of content to each other.

Kete is developed with Ruby on Rails, utilizes Zebra z39.50 full text indexing engine developed by IndexData, is fully compatible with Koha, and is released under a GNU General Public License (GPL).

Kete recently won the 2007 3M Award for Innovation in New Zealand Libraries, and a Special Mention at the 2007 World Summit Awards for the North America - Oceania Region in the e-inclusion section.

Full documentation, contacts and links to the code repository can be found at the project site http://kete.net.nz

Joann Ransom.

Project Manager.

Brian Herzog writes an interesting piece about how his library switched the browser on their public computers to Firefox.

My library is in the process of re-doing all of our public computers. One major change we’re making is to switch to Firefox for our web browser, instead of the Internet Explorer/Public Web Browser combo we’ve always used.

The reason we’re switching is a simple one - Firefox is just cooler. It lets us have more control over how the browser functions, and lets us offer more tools integrated right into the browser. Better for us, better for patrons.

This is a great guide if you’re considering switching over your public computers to an open source alternative. He lists the add ons they used, settings and customizations. If you’re thinking about making the switch, give his post a look.

A new advocacy group, the Public Software Foundation (PSF), is working to make free and open source software available to local libraries so it can be checked out and used just like a book or video. The premise is simple: hand out one CD and maybe you’ve taught one person; make it available in a library and perhaps you’ll reach hundreds or thousands.

Todd and Karlie Robinson formed the Public Software Foundation last month to provide Linux distributions and OpenOffice.org to libraries to introduce open source software to those who might not have the opportunity to try it otherwise. The foundation currently has one volunteer in northern Indiana, another in Colorado, and a library request from Taunton, Mass. Other library contacts are in the early stages of discussion as of now as well.

How awesome is this?? Read more at Linux.com.

Via Code4Lib:

The OpenLibrary.org <http://www.openlibrary.org> team has just finished its latest release on the long path towards “one web page for every book ever published.”

What’s new?

• added another 6 million book records (13.4 million total) with 18 million more records waiting to be integrated

• built an API <http://www.openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api> to the data which allows you to query the database for objects matching particular criteria or to GET an object from the database
• added internationalization support <http://www.openlibrary.org/i18n> - we have already started on Spanish, Italian and a few other languages, but users are now able to translate the site into any language
• search the full text of 230,000 scanned books from the advanced search <http://www.openlibrary.org/advanced> page
• started merging library MARC records and non-library book data crawled from the web (still some kinks to be worked out!)

OpenLibrary is a work in progress, so please help us build it! The site, the code and the documentation are all open, so if you’re interested in helping as a librarian or a programmer, join us - there’s lots left to do!

You can join the OL mailing list at: http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss

And I’d especially like to thank our awesome team:

* Edward Betts
* Anand Chitipothu
* Karen Coyle
* Rebecca Malamud
* Paul Rubin
* Aaron Swartz

Thanks,

Alexis Rossi
Internet Archive

I just received an announcement that Relais International will be moving all or part of their software to an open source model.

Relais International has been working with libraries to develop systems to assist in providing a full range of interlibrary loan and document delivery services, for almost 10 years.

More on this will be presented at the Seventh Annual Northwest Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing Conference from September 18-19, 2008 at Portland Community College’s Sylvania Campus in Portland, Oregon.

For now you can read the press release announcing this big decision!