NOT SAN ANTONIO, TX - In a gala closing reception held nowhere near the ALA Midwinter Conference, the longest-running-if-barely-so library tech blog oss4lib.org came back. Bananas were eaten; drupal modules were installed. Reached at an Ikea store in Georgia, Ross Singer said "I use OSS4Lib, the /only/ source for OSS in Libraries." It's true, he said that - you could hear the slashes in his southern drawl. mdxi, of upstate #code4lib, added "oss4lib is the leading no-longer-purple web news source for developments in the intersection of libre software development and the evolution the library."

Updates include:

• Uses a real backend that wasn't written in 1998
• All old content has been tagged by topic
• Anybody can sign up and submit stories
• Anybody can create a project page for their open source/library project
• We're aggregating "oss4lib" tag feeds from del.icio.us and unalog; use the tag "oss4lib" on relevant links when you post to those sites, and your links will show up on the right over there -->
• All stories come with easy links to save or look up story bookmarks at unalog, del.icio.us, digg, reddit, and technorati
• You can sign up to get email notifying you of new stories again

Things left to do:

• A better theme (looking for volunteer contributions!)
• Some old links are probably broken; old list archive in particular needs a new home
• Figure out a good way to recreate the old project list and file cache
• Profit!

Come have a look around.

Please kick the tires a bit, and leave any comments here. Only registered users can comment or post, so create an account and sign if you want.

Thanks! -dchud

Our mission is to build better and free systems for use in libraries. Toward this end, we maintain a listing of free software and systems designed for libraries (the physical, books-on-shelves kind), and we track news about project updates or related issues of interest.

oss4lib started at the Yale Medical Library in early February 1999 thinking there were probably other folks like us out there who might be working on free library software or looking for same. Our reasons for wanting to see Open Source take off in the library software arena are straightforward, fairly typical, and mostly outlined in the Open Source Systems for Libraries: Getting Started piece. You would think librarians would have figured this shared software thing out years ago. :)

Dan Chudnov (dchud) started oss4lib and maintains it, along with the many readers who often post news. Everyone is welcome to sign up for an account and post news, so long as it's about free software or libraries or the intersection of both.

oss4lib is a volunteer effort. If you like oss4lib, consider buying snazzy oss4lib tshirts and mugs; we'll get $3/shirt or $2/mug, which doesn't sound like much but actually really helps.

SCALE is inviting all Open Source organizations to participate in the fourth annual So Cal Linux Expo.

Looking for an effective way to tell your product story and demonstrate its latest features to both new users as well as Linux veterans? Join other prestigious members of the Open Source community as they combine forces at the preeminent Linux exposition in the West. The fourth annual Southern California Linux Expo brings together businesses, academic institutions and the Linux community in Los Angeles on February 11-12, 2006.

KDE, MythTV, NetBSD, Debian and other organizations will be making their presence known alongside with corporate sponsors such as IBM. Meet the users and the industry influencers; get your name and your product front and center with a receptive and informed audience.

This year's SCALE will offer an expanded exhibit area to better accommodate your needs. The speaker list reads like a Who's Who of Open Source. Session topics ranging from beginner to expert draw a diverse crowd of enthusiastic attendees. Don't be conspicuous by your absence. Reserve your spot now for SCALE 4x by contacting us here: gareth@socallinuxexpo.com

roberto writes: "A full-text paper regarding some open source ILS (Integrated library Systems), already notified to this discussion list some months ago, has been just translated from the orginal Italian language into Spanish by Patricia Russo."

Joshua writes: "LibLime is pleased to announce the launch of our website and product demos. 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. On our website, you can find information about Koha and our other products: Mambo Intranet and DiscrimiNet Filter. Our Koha demos couple version 2.2.2's stable code base with a fresh template re-design. In addition, we've developed several Koha enhancement features: Amazon.com content (item cover images, descriptions, reviews, and ratings), spellchecking on failed search queries, and an auto-completion "Koha Suggest" for the OPAC keyword search, to name a few.

We love feedback, so feel free to visit our site, try out the demos, play around, and let us know what you think. Comments/suggestions/flames are always welcome ;-)."

Terry writes: "Cornell University Library is developing an open source publication management system that will provide authors and publishers with a more affordable way to publish scholarly research on the Web. Cornell received a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to enhance and extend its innovative electronic publishing software called DPubS (Digital Publishing System). Read the full-text of the press release."

Steve writes: "Just thought others would be interested in a thoughtful opinion piece by eWeek editor-in-chief, Eric Lundquist, in the April 19 issue. It discusses his view that Dell, as the acknowledged leader in the world of Wintel PCs right now, should push Microsoft and others a bit more on behalf of consumers. He also specifically mentions the need for Dell to articulate its support for open source applications."

Norman wrote in with a press release from CASPR Inc.: "CASPR Inc. today announced at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference an update to its library automation product called LibraryNet, which enables library administrators to easily deploy Web based library solutions on a wide range of platforms using industry standard open source components. LibraryNet 4.0 is an integrated library automation system designed around the industry standard MARC format, Apache Web Server, Perl Programming language, DBFILE indexing system and HTML Web user interface. The program runs on all standard operating systems including Windows, Macintosh, and Linux." Read the full press release here.

Henrik writes: "TheOpenCD project has completed its second CD with high quality Open Source Software for Windows. The mission of TheOpenCD project is to introduce the general computer user to the world of Open Source by making it easily available for Windows users and by presenting it in a professional manner. The latest CD ISO-image is available for immediate download from download mirrors. Recent stable release of OpenOffice and Mozilla provide the cornerstones for this collection. For this version we have expanded the selection of software, while still keeping a tight focus on quality and ease-of-use. For the more complex applications such as OpenOffice and GIMP we have included guides and tutorials, and for AbiWord and Mozilla we now include a selection of plug-ins. The CD browser program is much improved from v1 and now we also include a few multimedia demos in addition to the open source texts such as 'Free as in Freedom'. Software appearing on the TheOpenCD v1.2 is as follows: OpenOffice, AbiWord, TheGIMP, Mozilla, FileZilla, HTTrack, TightVNC, PuTTY, Audacity, CDex, Celestia, ReallySlick, CrackAttack!, YASC, 7zip, SciTE, WinPT and NetTime." And Greenstone, which makes this particularly useful for our community.