Open-Source Software

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Guggenheim Museum goes with Koha

LISNews.org | LibLime Koha is Chosen by the Guggenheim Museum
Tina N. Burger dropped by to spread The Word on The Guggenheim Museum going with Koha. The Guggenheim chose LibLime for its open-source expertise, and is confident that the partnership will better enable the museum to achieve its future library automation goals: “Working with LibLime will [...]

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Libraries facilitate open access to information with open source software

Linux.com | Libraries facilitate open access to information with open source software
Getting libraries in the minds of Unix geeks isn’t a bad idea either…

Koha with Class: Free Hosted Koha for Library Classrooms

Koha with Class: Free Hosted Koha for Library Classrooms | oss4lib
Just like Dialog, students can now play with Koha during school. Brilliant advertising for Liblime and Koha.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Giant, amazing study of Free/Open software

Boing Boing: Giant, amazing study of Free/Open software
Rishab Ayer Gosh has led an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers through an enormous study of Free/Open Source Software. The paper, called “Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU,” runs to 287 [...]

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

prototype | DLCMS

Drupal is a very powerful open-source content management system but it’s also hard for non-programmers to understand. DLCMS is a prototype of a Drupal system modified for library websites.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Are OPAC Vendors Days Numbered?

LISNews.org | Are OPAC Vendors Days Numbered?
… the combination of open source and the reluctance of vendors to keep their systems up to date will result result in the demise of significant number of commerical library vendors in the next five years. The poor performance and outdated products of commercial OPAC products is due largely [...]

Monday, August 21, 2006

WPopac in Use

LibrarianInBlack: Bloggy-Bloggy OPAC

Casey Bisson writes that the Lamson Library at Plymouth State University has decided to use the WordPress-based OPAC (WPopac) he built on nights and weekends as its primary OPAC from now on.

Things like this just make me more frustrated with the IT department at my school. We can’t get them to install anything [...]

Thursday, August 17, 2006

FoxyProxy

FoxyProxy: etc: quick links to good stuff

Can’t get to MySpace from school? Can’t use instant messenger at work? Shhhh, don’t tell. Now you can with FoxyProxy: take back your privacy
FoxyProxy is a full featured proxy management extension for Firefox, to help get around proxies of all sorts. Turn it on and off as needed.

Personally, [...]

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Second public library system in the US switches to Koha

West Liberty Public Library Migrates to Koha | oss4lib
… the West Liberty Public Library located in Iowa, USA has migrated to Koha, the first open-source Integrated Library System. This makes West Liberty the second public library system in the US to switch to Koha.
Tim McMahon, Technical Services librarian at West Liberty Public, said “We [...]

Thursday, February 9, 2006

New JISC project will feed tables of contents into library catalogues
A new JISC project is developing an RSS news feed service that will automatically feed publisher and e-journal information into library catalogues. 
… The open source software developed by the TOCRoSS project will be freely available to further and higher education establishments, publishers, and library management [...]

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Open Access Webliography

Open Access Webliography

This webliography presents a wide range of electronic resources related to the open access movement that are freely available on the Internet as of April 2005.

Lots and lots of resources.

Open Access Webliography

Open Access Webliography

This webliography presents a wide range of electronic resources related to the open access movement that are freely available on the Internet as of April 2005.

Lots and lots of resources.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Library OSS

Check out the Open-Source Software for Libraries list I’ve added.

Thursday, June 2, 2005

Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship

The Importance of Open Access, Open Source, and Open Standards…

These benefits of open access, open source, and open standards are numerous. The benefits include lower costs, great accessibility, and better prospects for long-term preservation of scholarly works. Libraries should embrace all three of these concepts now and in the future. By supporting open access, open [...]

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

LibLime

librarian.net

The folks at LibLime want to help make the move to open source library systems easier and less fraught with peril. They sell and support their own version of Koha

This is exactly what we need. I would love to try it out. I may have to set up a test installation.

Thursday, February 3, 2005

open source = more cops

LA city councilman says open source = more cops, or more teachers, or actual librarians. All cities and organizations need more money and proprietary solutions can be an unnecessary drain.
Not to say you should use all open-source all of the time. But often it is just as good or better than the far more [...]

Friday, January 21, 2005

The Risks of Closed Source Computing

The Risks of Closed Source Computing
One large vendor likes to talk about the risks of Open Source software, but the strange thing is, the risk is actually in closed technologies. This article looks at the real risks in following a proprietary software path.

It’s well-written and easy to follow.

Friday, December 17, 2004

Intrastructure

TechnoBiblio: Intrastructure - yeah, that is what I meant to say
Doesn’t any of this make ILS vendors worried? Hey - what’s that on the horizon? The Four Horsemen of the Obsolescence - Open Standards, Modularity, Commodity Hardware, and Frustrated User Base.

We can only hope.

Thursday, December 9, 2004

Thunderbird - Reclaim Your Inbox

Thunderbird - Reclaim Your Inbox
Thunderbird gives you a faster, safer, and more productive email experience. We designed Thunderbird to prevent viruses and to stop junk mail so you can get back to reading your mail. Read on to find out more about the reasons why you should use Thunderbird as your mail client and RSS [...]

Tuesday, December 7, 2004

Open-ILS.org

Open-ILS.org. is information central for the development effort of an open source Intregrated Library System (ILS), named Evergreen. This software is being developed and maintained by the Georgia Public Library Service for use by the Georgia Library PINES Program, a consortium of 249 public libraries. This software can be downloaded for free, and anyone can [...]

Friday, December 3, 2004

Brushtail

Brushtail is a open source intranet suitable for public libraries. It is released under the GPL public license.

Thursday, December 2, 2004

Library Web Chic

Another Reason why Open Source Software Rocks
This is what I love about open source, just how quick things can happen. The other day someone dropped a note to the Koha mail-list asking about a link to Amazon from Koha. I then mentioned a link to OpenWorldCat would be a nice option, if there were no [...]

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Bibliography

The Open Source Software and Libraries Bibliography is amazingly long and far-reaching. It’s a great place to start for your own research.

Thursday, September 9, 2004

Support and Mainenance of OSS

The knowedgable answers from a professional actually implementing an open-source ILS via OSS-4-Lib.

Thursday, June 17, 2004

PINES

Georgia is creating an open-source ILS for it’s resource sharing collective, PINES.
this could easily be the biggest thing to happen with Open Source in the library community since linux was first used in a library setting. There have been many OSS success stories in libraries, but the ILS has never really been tackled for [...]

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

OSS Profits

Wired News: MySQL Profits From Open Source
“Lack of budgets forced everyone to take serious stock of what they were running and if it was worth the money,” he said. “Compared to running MySQL, a lot of commercial databases couldn’t hold up to the scrutiny.”

Friday, February 13, 2004

The Microsoft killers

Prospect Magazine - Britain’s Intelligent Conversation
For many popular desktop applications, such as word processors, open source software often follows the innovations made in proprietary software. And so Microsoft Word remains a more polished product than its open source rivals. But it is by no means clear that all buyers, especially organisations, choose software solely on [...]

Monday, February 9, 2004

OSS in TEIs

Factors affecting the use of open source software in tertiary education institutions
Open Source Software (OSS) is software that has been released under a license which requires the distribution of the software’s source code with any binaries. It is often available at no cost and is mostly supported by developers providing their services for free. Considerable [...]

Sunday, February 8, 2004

OSS Filtering

TechnoBiblio: Ahhh, filtering….
See, I’m not the only one.

Friday, February 6, 2004

Shared Source

OpenEnterpriseTrends.com: Open Source vs. Shared Source - Hunt for Value
In a nutshell, shared source is a take-off on the open source model without all the benefits that open source offers. Shared source licenses do not allow developers to modify the source code and certain portions of the source code remain hidden and it cannot be [...]

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

OSS E-Voting

Wired News: Open-Source E-Voting Heads West
There are issues for and against both types of software but the fact that 4 years later so many people still believe that Bush didn’t actually win the election proves the need for some type of change.

Thursday, January 15, 2004

Israeli OpenOffice

OpenOffice Finds Sweet Spot with Governments | ReachCustomersOnline.com
The Israeli government has switched from Microsoft Office.
Another government, another win for open source. Seriously, though, at the bottom of this article are some excellent reasons why OpenOffice and open source are healthy for businesses and consumers.

Monday, January 12, 2004

OSS Research

Bonaccorsi, Andrea and Rossi, Cristina, Altruistic individuals, selfish firms? First Monday Volume 9, Number 1 � January 5th 2004.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_1/bonaccorsi/index.html
During 2002, we conducted a survey on 146 Italian firms supplying Open Source software. This paper compares our data on firms� motivations with data emerging from surveys made on individual programmers. We analyse the role played by [...]

Wednesday, January 7, 2004

Asia Loves Linux

BW Online | January 12, 2004 | Asia Loves Linux — And Microsoft Scrambles
China, Japan, and South Korea, for instance, are working to develop an operating system more attuned to their character-based languages that will likely be modeled after Linux.
And if they’re careful, it will still work with western computers, giving them the best of [...]

Monday, January 5, 2004

OSS in Massachusetts

Boston.com / Business / Technology / Open-source battle is heating up

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

OSS in Public Libraries

NewsForge | Getting open source into public libraries
I have been spending the last six months working to get the first open source or free software CDs available in libraries as lending CDs. I have now succeeded; 415 public libraries out of a possible 507 have accepted them in Scotland.
After working on this project, I have [...]

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Usability and OSS

Usability and open-source software development
Proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Human Interaction, (eds.) Kemp, E., Phillips, C., Kinshuk & Haynes, J., 6 July 2001, Palmerston North, New Zealand. ACM SIGCHI New Zealand. 49-54. ISBN: 0-473-07559-8.
Open-source is becoming an increasingly popular software development method. This paper reports a usability study of the open-source [...]

Monday, December 8, 2003

Linux managing model

The Linux managing model
The Linux managing model by Federico Iannacci
First Monday, volume 8, number 12 (December 2003), URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/iannacci/index.html
The pros and cons of open-source versus commercial or proprietary development have been argued as part of the open vs. closed debate but this article actually examines the process of development in the Linux operating system, one [...]

OSS in Developing Countries

Licence fees and GDP per capita
Licence fees and GDP per capita: The case for open source in developing countries by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh First Monday, volume 8, number 12 (December 2003), URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ghosh/index.html
this note argues that the controversy over total costs of ownership (TCO) of free vs. proprietary software is not applicable to developing [...]

OSS Misunderstood

How to Misunderstand Open Source Software Development
A very well-written and credible essay on open-source software from a professional developer.

Tuesday, September 9, 2003

Nations to Develop Non-Windows Software

Nations to Develop Non-Windows Software
Japan, China and South Korea have agreed to cooperate in a project to boost research and development of software for operating systems other than industry leader Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, a Japanese trade ministry official said Friday.

Rockin’ on without Microsoft

Tech News - CNET.com–Rockin’ on without Microsoft
Sterling Ball, a jovial, plain-talking businessman, is CEO of Ernie Ball, the world’s leading maker of premium guitar strings endorsed by generations of artists ranging from the likes of Eric Clapton to the dudes from Metallica.
But since jettisoning all of Microsoft products three years [...]

Friday, August 29, 2003

Demise of Microsoft in Brazil

Brazil - Brasil - BRAZZIL - News from Brazil - Free Software in Government and the Demise of Microsoft in Brazil - Brazilian Technology - August 2003
Brazil believes that free software is an excellent tool for the democratization of knowledge, foreign currency savings, and the optimization of institutional investments and costs. The model [...]

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

OSS in Use

Open Source Goes Mainstream From Library Journal, a good overview of what open source is.
Open Source ILS- The Nelsonville Public Library is proud to announce the deployment of the MARC-compatible version of Koha , “the first open source integrated library system”. Check out the catalog link.

Thursday, August 7, 2003

Linux for Systems

AP Wire | 08/05/2003 | Linux OK’d for Use on Most-Sensitive PCs
Terra Soft, Lockheed to put Xserves in U.S. Navy subs

The Linux operating system has been approved for the most secure government computers and is already being implemented on Navy subs. Could this help the US governments bad track record with unsecure data?

Friday, August 1, 2003

Mandrake Linux

Mandrake Linux - Friendly Linux operating system for both servers and desktop combined with KDE gui is said to make for a decent replacement for Windows. For free it’s worth trying if you’re using a PC.

Thursday, July 24, 2003

The Open Source Option

Library Journal | Reed Business Information- The Open Source Option
Frank Cervone discusses the benefits and drawbacks of open-source software. The article’s tone seems a little negative but he does a good job of outlining the facts.

Monday, July 7, 2003

Open Censorware

Aaron’s Censorware
Ed Felten half-seriously suggests that we create censorware that doesn’t overblock and has an open list, so that US libraries who want to receive federal funding can do so without unduly harming free speech.
Up for the challenge, I’ve written a simple censorware program (the censor code is only a couple of lines): censor.py
It looks [...]

Wednesday, May 7, 2003

BusinessWeek Online Open Source Issue

BusinessWeek Online: BW Magazine has devoted an entire issue to Linux and Open Source software this week.
Two paricular favorites of mine are “Next from Open Source: Killer Apps?” and “Programmers Are Like Artists”.
The first discusses the open source applications that are now being built, including corporate software using open source bases that don’t require [...]

An Introduction to Open Source Communities

An Introduction to Open Source Communities is a research report on Open Source Communities. It looks at “…existing, relevant research, and presents original case studies of two open source projects: TouchGraph and SquirrelMail. It identifies some patterns of collaboration that both of these projects share, and describes how these patterns might apply to other types [...]

Tuesday, May 6, 2003

OPEN MIND: open source

OPEN MIND: open source is a news blog sponsored by Corante and written by Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier focusing on Open Source software.

Tuesday, April 29, 2003

A Free Alternative to MS Office

OpenOffice.org is a suite of applications built to work with MS Office files but their own formats are XML-based. Open-source means that anyone with the ability can add to the program or make adjustments to fit their needs. It is free to download and use.

IM

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