As seen at blyberg.net, John Blyberg wrote: "I finally got permission to go ahead with implementing what I’ve dubbed “The SOPAC” here at AADL. That would be “cute-speak” for Social OPAC. The SOPAC represents a slew of features that I’ve wanted to implement for quite some time now. I’m rather excited to see if library users will respond to these tools in an OPAC setting as much as Web 2.0 users have to commercial social networking sites. I’m fairly confident they will. ...So what is the SOPAC? It’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. Links for the files, along with other interesting packages John has released over the years, are available here.

Congrats to John on this milestone release!

A Swicki is community powered search engine that tailors the results to produce targeted search results for the community. The search results from a swicki is more focused than a general search engine and can learn and adapt, anonymously and automatically, based on the search behavior of the community.

A swicki can also be trained. Sites that are useful can be promoted and those not relevant can be excluded. A “buzz cloud” provides a swarm of words that are hot in the community. The search results from a swicki are more focused than a general search engine and they will continue to learn and adapt, anonymously and automatically, based on the search behavior of the community.

In support of the OSS4Lib community I created the Open Source Systems for Libraries swicki.

Jon writes: "Another update to the Loughborough Online Reading List System (LORLS). Changes include the tagged-ref-import script omitted previously, also some fixes for tagged reference (specifically RefWorks) import and export. Fixed modcode suggestions if a user tries to create a new module with a code that already exists. MARC.pm now used to decode the records supplied by Z39.50 (including ones with local control numbers and no real ISBN/ISSNs or multiple ISSN/ISBNs). Displaylist now does caseless matching of stages/dept codes as we had some instances of lists "invisible" to browsing because of incorrect case for these. Added some extra indexes as suggested by Ben Charlton."

anon writes: "Version 4.9 of the open source Loughborough Online Reading Lists System (LORLS) is now available. This version contains various small bug fixes and enhancements, and has much improved support for CSS out of the box. All the HTML generated from the CGI scripts now has CSS class tagging and a sample CSS style sheet file is supplied as part of the distribution. The installation script has also been revised to handle the CSS features. Any feedback on problems or suggestions for the future are welcome - please join the lorls mailing list if you have not already done so by sending the text "subscribe lorls" to majordomo@lists.lboro.ac.uk. -The LORLS Development Team (aka Jim'll and Gary :-)."

"Gregg Martinson submits, for your interest and/or approval the latest version of his Link-Checking URL Database for schools and Libraries that want to keep collections of preselected links but are concerned about link rot and the unstructured web. The program is written in Pure PHP. Runs on Mysql and is based on PHPLinks. New Additions in the 2.0 version include a new graphical style, googling within the program and the ability to link it to your OPAC. He offers technical support for installation and trouble-shooting for free(although you get what you pay for...) Check it out at The sourcefore page."

Don writes: "iVia - the software that runs the INFOMINE gateway - is described in an article from D-Lib Magazine, Jan. 2003 - "iVia Open Source Virtual Library System". Wow!"

Kelsey writes: "ResearchGuide is an open-source application, implemented using PHP/MySQL, that helps librarians make subject guides and specialist information pages using Web forms (no HTML necessary). A benefit of this approach is that guides in different subjects are integrated into one web environment. Each has a similar look and feel but guide contents are customizable. Change the appearance of all guides by making edits in just two files -- the php file that generates the guides and a CSS stylesheet."

Jon writes: "Loughborough University Library has released version 3 of our Reading List system. This can be picked up from our software distribution page. The Reading List system was developed at Loughborough to fill a perceived gap in the available commercial systems and also to allow us to customise the system to our needs. It is written in Perl, runs under Linux and makes use of a MySQL database and the Net::Z3950 and MARC Perl modules to provide Z39.50 links into existing library systems. It has been in production use at Loughborough for well over 2 years now and earlier versions have been taken by other local Universities for their own reading list systems. This is the first major public distribution of this system to a wider general audience."

Peter writes: "Those that have seen 0.2.5 will know that I've completely redesigned the theme engine code re-use, major changes to the admin category array code to improve page speed, added "Prev month click-thru" stats and cool but useless page generation timing. New in 0.2.6: Index.asp now reports the total links and categories, and linksStats.asp reports the top 5 clicked links, as well as the 5 most recently clicked links. You can download it here."

David wrote to oss4lib-discuss: "Internet Scout Project would like to invite potential portal developers to investigate the Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT). This open source software package, funded by the Mellon Foundation, allows groups or organizations to develop a portal online without making a big investment in technical resources or expertise. The current SPT package features include: a metadata field editor, which allows portal administrators the ability to add, delete, or disable a variety of metadata fields; a Dublin Core compliant metadata field set; cross-field Searching; resource annotations and quality ratings by users; intelligent user agents; suggested resource referrals (recommender system); accessibility for users with disabilities; and RSS channel export."