Open-Source Software for Libraries

I’ve been collecting open-source software links for MPOW and I thought I might as well post the list here. I’ll try to keep it updated. It’s far from comprehensive but it can provide a good start if you’re looking for stuff to try.

Combo Platter

Designed by Librarians, for Librarians, Lib2o is the first open-source library appliance with an integrated library system (ILS) and the added benefit of the collaborative tools within the Islandora Digital Asset Management (DAM) system. The ILS consists of cataloguing, acquisitions, serials, and circulation systems, along with a customizable interface. The DAM consists of the award- winning Islandora software, initially developed at UPEI. Installed components include: Evergreen, Apache, Tomcat, PostgreSQL, Drupal, Javascript, Solr, Fedora, Islandora, Jabber, XML. The finished product is delivered on a Dell PowerEdge T410 server.

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 25 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

Digital Repository

A groundbreaking digital repository system, DSpace captures, stores, indexes, preserves, and redistributes an organization’s research material in digital formats.

ILS

Evergreen is being developed and maintained by the Georgia Public Library Service for use by the Georgia Library PINES Program, a consortium of 252 public libraries. This software can be downloaded for free, and anyone can contribute to development efforts.

Koha includes a full catalog, opac, circulation and acquisitions system. With the 2.2 version, Koha is now a mature product, with a lot of nice features. It’s used in more than 50 libraries including academic, public, school, and religious, and has demonstrated good scalability (from 1 to 8 branches, and from 1,000 to 300,000 items).

OpenBiblio is an easy to use, open source, automated library system written in PHP containing OPAC, circulation, cataloging, and staff administration functionality. The purpose of this project is to provide a cost effective library automation solution for private collections, clubs, churches, schools, or public libraries.

SOPAC2It’s basically a set of social networking tools integrated into the AADL catalog. It gives users the ability to rate, review, comment-on, and tag items. SOPAC presents as a set of drupal modules and ships under the GPLv2.

Intranet

Brushtail is a open source intranet suitable for public libraries.

Publishing

The HyperJournal is an Open Source software application which enables on-line as well as printed publishing in an innovative and significantly cost-cutting way

Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research. OJS assists with every stage of the refereed publishing process, from submissions through to online publication and indexing.

Reserves

ReservesDirect is a complete, integrated software package for managing academic reserves materials for university and college courses.

Resource Directory

CWIS (Collection Workflow Integration System) is an OSS software package to assemble, organize, and share collections of data about resources, like Yahoo or Google Directory but conforming to international and academic standards for metadata.

Support

LibLime provides full vendor services (migration assistance, staff training, and software maintenance, support and development) to libraries for open-source software like Koha. Our mission is to make open-source software more accessible to libraries.

You’d have to do a comparison but it’s a good bet that a contract with LibLime for support costs a lot less than buying the software from a vendor, plus you keep the pluses of open-source.