Getting Started with Drupal (a.k.a. Drupal4LITA Bootcamp) Preconference, June 27th, 2008 Anaheim Public Library Cary Gordon of the Cherry Hill Company, a vendor specializing in support of open source software, gave an extremely detailed introduction to Drupal 6.2, the latest version of the open source content management system. The attendees came from a variety of library types, including academic, public, and special, and with a variety of experience levels with the system. Flash drives with the XAMPP server/database combination pre-installed were distributed along with the components for a Drupal installation. The morning focused on setting up Apache, the MySQL database, some PHP settings, and a basic install of Drupal. The afternoon covered modules (the building blocks of a Drupal site), user permissions, basic content creation, and an introduction to Drupal’s specialized vocabulary: nodes, taxonomies, menus, blocks. The program concluded with an excellent list of Drupal-related resources available on the web….
Author: cstrauber
Building and supporting Koha
Building and Support Koha, an open-source ILS Saturday June 28th, 2008, 10:30-12:00 Hyatt Regency Orange County John Houser, Senior Technology Consultant for PALINET, and Johsua Ferraro, CEO of Liblime, set out to answer common questions about open-source ILS systems with a focus on Liblime’s support for Koha. The format was an interview, and the resulting questions and answers were recorded. Watch for a link to the podcast version here. Representative questions and answers follow, but these are only samples of an extremely rich discussion of general and very specific technical details. Cost Don’t necessarily plan to save lots of money on an open-source ILS, as planning to contribute to development efforts has many advantages–primarily that you get to set the priorities for new features in the ILS. A representative of a Koha library in the audience pointedly disagreed, stressing that in his case there were significant cost savings. How does…
Open Source Legal Issues
Monday, June 30th, 2008 Hyatt Regency Orange County Walt Scacchi of UC-Irvine stepped in as a last-minute replacement speaker for Karen Sandler of the Software Freedom Law Center and gave a talk entitled “Research Results for Free/Open Source Software Development: Best Practices for Libraries? (and some legal issues too)” based on his empirical research on open-source project processes, practices, and community development . The talk was rich in details on who open-source developers are and what they do. Using the current stats at Sourceforge as a starting point, he estimated approximately 180,000 current open-source software projects, of which approximately 18,000 (10%) are currently being succesfully developed. The largest area of open-source development is in games, in large part driven by the fact that the very successful Sony game systems are built using open-source software. Open-source developers tend to use the tools they build, which is not necessarily the case for…
Open Source Systems IG Meeting
LITA Open Source Systems IG business meeting Midwinter, 2008 January 14th Marriott Philadelphia Present were representatives of the National Archives of Canada, Liblime, Rowan University, Index Data, the Texas State Library, City College of San Francisco, Georgetown’s Law Library, Texas Wesleyan, the Massachussetts Trial Court Law Library, Florida State University, Wayne State University, Minnesota’s CLIC consortium, PALINET, Eastern Michigan University, and Wofford College. Who’s Using What Open-source content management systems were the most commonly used type of software, with Plone and Drupal coming up most frequently. About half of those present were at some level of consideration or implementation of an open-source ILS, with Evergreen and Koha being most mentioned, though there was also discussion of VuFind, Blacklight, and the eXtensible Catalog project; several had been to the Next Gen Catalog IG meeting the previous day where several of these projects were discussed. DLXS (digital library image management), WordPress (blogging),…
All Your LITA (supplement)
I have created a public Google Calendar of LITA events at Annual. It is based on the scheduling info Aaron posted a link to last week. This version renders a little more clearly on my phone, but you might like to import it or subscribe to it in a variety of ways. Here is the HTML version Here is the Ical version (this imports nicely into Outlook 2003, and should work on Outlook 2007 and most every other desktop calendar app) Here is the (wonky but workable) XML version for your RSS reader
Open Source Systems IG meeting – ALA Midwinter
Open Source Systems Interest Group meeting Sunday, January 21, 2007, 4-6pm The group reviewed the list of programs planned for Annual in DC Evergreen, the Georgia PINES consortium’s open ILS program Automating metadata creation with open source software. Patrick Yott from Brown. The next-generation public library website with Drupal. John Blyberg from the Ann Arbor District Library. Sakai collaboration and learning environment. Joseph Harden from the University of Michigan. A preconference on using Dotproject for project management, rescheduled because of Katrina. Jennifer Bowen from the University of Rochester reported on the status of the Extensible Catalog project (XC) and the grant associated with it. The idea is to create an open source user interface for library catalogs which would work with the library’s ILS system rather than replacing it. The Mellon Foundation grant for 2006-2007 was designed to allow the group to create a project plan, determine requirements, plan the…
Top Tech Trends (Good Parts version)
You should really listen to the podcasts. There are things I won’t be able to do in words. Like give you the experience of Karen Schneider singing her recruiting song. Or summarize Clifford Lynch (can anyone do that?). So, for the time-pressed, here is a summary of the Top Tech Trends discussion at ALA Midwinter, in the fabulous Spanish Ballroom of the Fairmont Olympic in Seattle. Present were: Jennifer Ward (the committee chair), Maurice York, Clifford Lynch, Marshall Breeding, and Karen Schneider. Absent speakers were: Roy Tennant, Sarah Houghton-Jan, Eric Lease-Morgan, and Thomas Dowling. There was much discussion of possible alternatives to the traditional OPAC. Tennant and Houghton-Jan mentioned OCLC and some version of Worldcat as a potential OPAC for consortia. Schneider questioned the assumption that our primary finding aid should be a locally tweaked dataset, and Breeding commented that the trend is toward national or international aggregations of that…
Audiobook 3.0 (Was Ebook 3.0) Question & Answer (2 of 2)
Ipsen Q: What kinds of libraries do audience members work at? (About half and half public and academic libraries, with a few school and special) Q to panel: How do you make your money? The service? The device? Potash: We’re a solutions provider. Libraries came to us and said this is what we want–as much popular stuff as possible. We want to control presentation and use. Two revenue models: system fees for integration with ILS and Marc records; partnerships with publishers to resell material (digital costs are lower than print); can also provide a digital repository with no content. Like a digital vending machine you can set up exactly how you want. 9000 audio books from many publishers, many in foreign languages. Celeste: We make things and sell them. Licensing content and reselling it in a new form. Or working with the publisher to distribute their content. Business model uncomplicated,…
Audiobook 3.0 (Was Ebook 3.0): The Converging of the Mobile Lifestyle Platform (1 of 2)
Audiobook 3.0: the converging of the mobile lifestyle media platform Monday June 26 8-noon Speakers: Christopher Celeste, CEO PlayAway Steve Potash, CEO Overdrive Gillian Harrison, OCLC/NetLibrary Intro by Eric Ipsen, ETIG (Emerging Technology Interest Group) chair (about 50 people at start, growing to capacity as the session went on) Background: Ebook 3.0 was the former title of this session. Sony was very interested in coming and didn’t want to upset ALA, but are very concerned to get the rollout of their new ebook reader right for an important audience. Each of the presenters here does both ebooks and audio books. Goal: a conversation, not a vendor forum. Encouragement to ask tough questions (and for panelists not to be defensive) Steve Potash, Overdrive CEO (Cleveland OH) Digital book publishing for twenty years. Downloadable audio books. Software company. Originally diskettes, then CD-ROMs. Some evolution since then. Digital warehousing service for 500 publishers….
Open Source Programs for the Reference Librarian
Open Source Programs for the Reference Librarian: When Your Budget is More Limited Than Your Vision LITA Open Source Systems Interest Group Sunday June 25 8:30-10 Speakers (in order): Ranti Junus, Michigan State Teria Curry, Johns Hopkins Kirsten Allen, American University Mary Evangeline, Univ. of Arizona George Harmon, Florida State (note: editorial parentheticals are by the scribe. Otherwise this is a loose paraphrase) (About 100 chairs. Two-thirds full at start of session). (A festive mood on the panel; much good-natured laughter. Remarkable for 8:30am). Intro by Gwendolyn Reece, chair of OSSIG Definition of open source software: freely available computer programs. Usually monetarily free also, but not necessarily. The freedom is the freedom to make copies and to make changes to improve the program or make it do exactly what you want. Open source programs are collaboratively developed and tested in a process very much like peer review for academics. However,…