Craighton writes about three new packages from Olivet Nazarene University Benner Library, all of which are available on their Open Source Projects page:

The Web Access Reserve Program (WARP) is a Perl script that will organize electronic reserve files by professor name and class number, and make uploading files to the web server a click and drag operation.

ILLWizard 1.0 is an ISO-10161-compliant, OCLC-Direct-Request-compatible ILL Web form that is easily customizable by non-technical librarians. This Java applet can be customized by changing the program parameters in the html file.

Joe's ILL OCLC Macro Language macros will move the data in interlibrary loan email requests from email into OCLC ILL module workforms in Passport software.

Peter writes: "Avanti version 0.4 pre-release 1 is complete and is available at the Avanti website. Included in this release is the first GUI search client (finally!). A running demo of this client is available at the web site. Give it a try! A more in depth explanation of the interface design is available here.

Version 0.4 represents a major step forward for Avanti. This version defines all the fundamental components of the system from back-end DBMS to GUI client. 0.4 also defines the overall client-server architecture of Avanti and the communications protocol used between client and server. The next release will be 0.4 proper, a much cleaner and better documented rendition of what is in this pre-release.

as seen at NTK: check out GZigZag, now at version 0.5.1 (released 2001/01, so, ok, we're a bit slow). From the site: "Ted Nelson's ZigZag(tm) is a new way of putting information into computers, kind of a crossing between a database, a filesystem, a personal information manager and many others. And even that isn't sufficient to describe it: it's simply something new... GZigZag is an open-source free software project implementing ZigZag architecture." We've heard noises about this off and on for years but this is a working implementation. Play with this release, work through the users' guide, create some new dimensions... it runs as advertised and while it's still more a cool toy than a functional worldview, there are real applications for it under development now. Wow.

as seen at lwn: "IBM has released the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) libraries as open source for Java developers. 'The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration initiative, launched last year, is a multivendor effort to create registries for Web services, allowing companies to automatically discover each other and do business over the Web.'"

Put simply, UDDI is a corporate registry framework, providing a standard API for white/yellow-pages services to enable ecommerce. In other words, this allows any business to specify which ecommerce functions they support, and it's all centered around corporate name authority control. For concrete examples of what code will look like, see this overview on the developerworks site.

Peter writes to oss4lib-discuss: "Over the past couple of months I have done a complete rewite and and reorganization of Avanti. The results so far can be seen here. It includes its own integrated database management system, PicoDB; and ARMS, a sort of a hyperlinked object database that will eventually be a key component for the future OPAC module.

This pre-release is meant as a reference point for subsequent development towards version 0.4 and to make it available for anyone interested to look at and play with. Its rough, with still a lot of fleshing out to do and user interfaces to put in place but that will be coming very soon!"

Go, Peter, go!

Ian writes: "The Beta-2 Release is of JZKit, an open source pure java Z3950 toolkit is now available here or from sourceforge. JZKit is distributed under the LGPL and supports both origin and target development, but this beta release only features an example client.

The release is aimed at Z3950 developers (It really is for developers only at the moment, and the documentation is almost non-existent) who are interested in a java toolkit and don't mind playing around with beta software. The tookit uses its own internal ASN/BER runtime (Compiler also avialable for download in case you have any pesky private externals, or want to have a go with ISO10161). Right now, the project needs a few interested parties to generate some feedback so we can beat the thing into release shape."

Peter writes: "A preview version of PicoDB (a simple, lightweight DBMS core written in Java) along with technical documentation has been posted to the Avanti project website. PicoDB is the integrated database component for the Avanti library system. With a design philosophy that emhasizes simplicity, it is being developed in anticipation of Avanti having to run in environments where a fully functional DBMS may not be available and to minimize the need to integrate with other software components for basic functionality. For more information vist the project website at www.nslsilus.org/~schlumpf/avanti."

from freshmeat: "Support for "private" reference which is only viewable by its author or a limited group of users, multiple page display support, a lot of improvements on the administration interface, and cleanups to the backend code." openreference.sourceforge.net...

from freshmeat: "OpenReference is a Java servlet/JSP-based Web application meant to help you manage your research references and notes. It is well-suited for students and professionals. There is also a public server for those who do not have their own servlet engines. The public server can be customized so that it acts like your private one." This is great; I've been wanting to use something like this for a while and talked with others of a similar mind at Access y2k about same...

from freshmeat: "Significant API changes, involving provision of a unified settings system for passing parameters, and several small tweaks. Applications will need simple modifications and recompilation. Also features improved weighting, a forking network server, and a few bugfixes. Note that the Java, Perl and Python bindings do not function in this version - do not upgrade to this version if you require these." For more see open.muscat.com.