Open Source Software

Open Source Software is big in the library world right now. There has been a lot of buzz around Open Source integrated library systems, like Koha and Evergreen (used statewide by the Georgia Library PINES consortia). The great thing about these systems is, if you have the right expertise on your staff, you can just download them for free and start using them. If you want to improve the system, you don't need to add them to a large vendor wish list competing against the wished of other library systems using the product. You can just hire somebody to make the changes for you.

There are also more libraries using Linux and Open Office on their public access computers. The operating system and software are free. They also do not consume as many system resources as comparable products, and, therefore, can run quite well on the older computers many libraries are using as their public access computers. Ubuntu is a free download the bundles a Linux-based operating system with Open Office, Mozilla Firefox, and Evolution e-mail software.

Want to learn more about how your library can use Open Source Software? NELA's Information Technology Section is sponsoring a full-day program on Open Source on Wednesday, June 6. Registration is closing on May 31, so you need to sign up soon. More details are available at http://www.nelib.org/its/conference/.

Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections

Does your library have any digital collections? If so, you may want to try doing what the University of Washington Libraries did as outlined in this article, Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections.

Instead of fighting the trend of students using Wikipedia as their first reference, they have tried to improve upon the articles by including relevant links to their digital collections. I discovered this article through Jessamyn West's blog, where Jessamyn also noted that Wikipedia allows you to see all of the contributions the University of Washington made to Wikipedia.

LibraryThing for Libraries

Tim Spaulding talked about this at the Computers in Libraries conference, and it looks like it's now up and running. LibraryThing for Libraries integrates with your current catalog to add book recommendations, tag clouds, ratings, and patron .

It looks like patrons will only be able to browse the LibraryThing tags and reviews at this time, but the ability to allow patrons to add tags or reviews are planned for the future.

You can take a look at it at http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries/

Science Friday talks about Digital Libraries

I caught this on my way back from a meeting Friday. Science Friday devoted it's first hour to digital libraries. The first started by discussing a project to create an online encyclopedia of life. Host Ira Flatow then talked to Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive, Michael Hart, Founder of Project Gutenberg, and Michael Keller, University Librarian at Stanford University (one of the institution's working on the Google Digitization project), about digital libraries.

There was an interesting discussion about the concern that projects involving commercial interests, like the Google project, will not allow full access to the digital works when the print counterparts are in the public domain. You can listen to the discussion by going to http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2007/May/hour1_051107.html.