oss4lib

From the story at Linux.com: "The open source movement and libraries have a lot in common, not the least of which is the belief in free and open access to ideas and information. Yet, until recently, libraries have been slow to switch to open source software. Libraries have highly specialized software needs because the library community has developed its own complex standards and protocols to facilitate things like interlibrary loan, meta data sharing, and federated searching. Until recently, lack of commercial support made implementing open source unfeasible for libraries without an IT staff. Also, open source alternatives weren't perceived as scalable or feature-rich enough to handle the complex needs of most libraries. Now, commercial support has facilitated new levels of collaboration between libraries through sponsored development."

From the press release: "LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries, announced today the launch of the Koha with Class Initiative, offering free hosted Koha systems to library school classrooms."

Plone is a "user-friendly and powerful open source Content Management System". If you are trying to find a content management tool, you might want to know more about Plone. Visit this tool at: http://plone.org/

BooksPrice.com, a book price comparison service, created several unique tools to help libraries, publishers and sellers to prepare for the ISBN change:

• On line conversion of any number of ISBNs, and ability to save the results to an Office Excel file.
• A dedicated free unique conversion web service.
• Free ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 java source code.

  All these services can be found on this page:

  http://www.booksprice.com/ISBN13.jsp

anon writes: "Brushtail is an open source library intranet. Runs on PHP/MySQL. Includes a CMS, events bookings, PC bookings, IT jobsheet, reference database, casual staff listing, hours available noticboard, document uploads and more. Developed specifically for public libraries."

Kevin writes: "The Library Acquisitions Database manages the ordering and receiving of items, such as books and video cassettes, for a library system, featuring individual-branch buying and budgeting. It is developed in Perl (with DBI) with a MySQL database backend. It is developed by the TNRD Library System, which has already developed Public Access Terminal Control (PATC), for user access control PATC. Acquis is still under development, and no releases have been made yet. However, the source can be checked out of CVS with anonymous check-out and installed on a web server. See Information on accessing the CVS repository or Browse the CVS repository online. If you are interested in joining development on Acquis, please read the Developer's Guide. Also available is a graph of the Database Schema. Interested developers can e-mail Chad Wallace [cmdrwalrus@canada.com] to request to be added to the project."

Ben writes: "Barcodes-on-the-fly helper 0.2, a web-based program which generates printable CODABAR barcodes, has just been released. This is a new project and has undergone only the briefest testing (I've only spent a few hours on the whole project). Please test it on your automation system and tell me what doesn't work yet."

Tony writes: "lmstoolkit is a collection of JSP pages with a PostgreSQL backend. The original version of the application is designed for use by art center libraries. "

Art writes: "I put out the first public release of WIBS on Friday." From the site: "WIBS is the Windsor Internet Booking System. It is based on the wonderful MRBS (Meeting Room Booking System) and is designed to mediate access to public stations in libraries." The live systems look great, congrats Art!

Matt writes: "Welcome to the Reference Desk Manager (RDM) home page. The RDM is a PHP based web application, specifically designed to meet the needs of Reference Services. The RDM was initially developed at Oregon State University for use by our Reference Services staff. The code is being supplied as is, without warranty, for use and further development. For more information, please see the RDM Licensing. Moreover, as developments are made to the RDM codebase, they will be posted here for download. Feel free to offer suggests or improvements as well as any bug reports that you may find.