Open Source Library-Related Software

A Quick Tour

A Lot Of It About

The library OS “movement” has grown with OS generallyMore IT expertise in the professionMore IT professionals working in libraries, especially academic

Types of Library OSS

The stuff you would normally pay for:The whole ILSOPACsDigital Collection managementE-resource access – OpenURL resolvers and metasearchUnder-bonnet stuff

ILS - Koha

http://www.koha.orgDeveloped initially in NZNow internationalSmall to medium libraries, especially publicWritten in PerlRuns on most platforms

OPACs - VuFind

http://www.vufind.org/“Library resource portal”Catalog records, E-journals, Digital repository, Bibliography, EtcHighly customisableRuns on Solr - http://lucene.apache.org/solr/Solr is based on Lucene http://lucene.apache.org/

ILS - Evergreen

Georgia Public Library ServiceIdeal for ConsortiaCombined patron databaseStaff Windows client

Digital Collections: Greenstone

http://www.greenstone.org/New Zealand Digital Library ProjectUNESCOBuild and distribute digital library collections – internet or CDROMMultilingual

Digital Collections - Fedora

http://www.fedora.info/Digital Repository softwareCornell Uni and Uni of Virginia

Metasearch - Libraryfind

http://libraryfind.org/Federated searchBulit-in OpenURL resolverLocal indexing

OpenURL Resolver - CUFTS

http://cufts.lib.sfu.ca/ Designed for consortiaKnowledgebase of 350 resources/ 422,000 titlesJournal A-Z + Print holdings integrationERM data storage (licenses etc)Perl, PostgreSQL, Apache

Bits and Pieces

Small local projects that are sharedOlivet Nazarine University Library: ILL Wizard – ILL web request form WARP – course reserves web

application

Things to Consider

OSS is a different world in many ways

Free as Kittens?

Free as Kittens?

Free software, but hidden costs/issues: hardware and deployment costs More in-house technical expertise

may be required Data conversion etc Training – where is the expertise?

Free as Kittens?

OSS is often designed to meet the developers needs, not necessarily the general marketplace. Good if your needs are similar

Documentation – programmers are notoriously weak on it!

Free as Kittens?

Support and maintenance – often a different model Some or all development is by the

users, not just original developer Software can be designed to be

modular, with capacity for “plug-ins” to be developed and added by users.

Support from users by public forums – very common in OSS

A Possible Solution

Commercialize the distribution and supportEg Redhat Linux Adds value to OS product – support,

quality control, security

Liblime

http://liblime.com/ Support for Koha, Evergreen, metasearch and digital library software“… commercial support services - hosting, migration assistance, staff training, support, software maintenance, and development”

Thank You