CIL2006, Day 3: Open Source Software for Libraries, by Glen Horton

Why is Open Source Software so important?

• libraries believe information should be freely accessible
• preservation relies on open standards
• privacy is important… to libraries and patrons [me - so how is open source software better? I don't see how open source software can keep my info private better than, say Microsoft...]
• libraries should lend open source software to patrons, via CD [me - that's be a bother... but you could sell/give away CDs to patrons. I think that'd be better than doing the whole loan thing with CDs]
• should be open source software providers

Digital collections:

• greenstone.org - cincinnatimemory.org uses it)
• it has plugins for pdf, word, excel, powerpoint, html, email, images, mp3, etc.
• it has a GUI for the back end (ie., input)
• it can publish collections to CD/DVD - nice

ILS:

• koha - www.athenscounty.lib.oh..us/koha.html as example
• Evergreen, Avanti are similar projects
• open-ils.org

Web content/filtering/caching

• DansGuardian - dansguardian.org - keyword-based
• SquidGuard - squidguard.org - url-based
• Hmm…
• meadvillelibrary.org/os/ as example

Wifi/Hotspot:

• PublicIP - publicip.net
• DansGuardian is built-in!

Thin Clients:

• itsp.org - uses old PCs as thin clients
• one main PC to support
• Userful Discovery Station: userful.com/products/library-ds
• 10 users on a single PC - 10 monitors, keyboards, mice… and one PC. Wow.

Other resources: oss4lib.org, webjunction (has a list)

cil2006