Edmund Balnaves's blog
Reflections on an Open Source year
Having just compiled the latest ILFA IT Section newsletter (http://www.ifla.org/files/information-technology/ifla1-09-dec_its.pdf) I remain excited at the prospects for Open Source adoption in 2010. In Australia we have seen the first inklings of Governmental libraries adopting open source for their OPAC or Digital Library and widening interest - particularly from Special Libraries. The process of open source adoption is not trivial but does have immense potential&
E-journal archiving and open source: two problems may have one solution
IFLA 2009 is in Europe. Attending the IFLA conference is a chance to visit some of the great libraries of the world. These libraries have superb collections of books as well as exceptional collections of journals.
For those journals targeted for long term retention, care is taken to ensure that complete annual issues of journal subscriptions are received, with follow-up on misssing issues. At relevant intervals these issues are bound for good retention.
Open Source moving forward
IFLA IT Section has been intensely engaged with Open Source in the last two weeks. In Rome, the Gobal Centr for ICT in Parliament worked with the ICT Section and the Parliamentary Libraries Section to present the workshop Leveraging Technology for Parliamentary Libraries and Research Services.
Trying out open source is getting easier
One of the difficulties of testing open source solutions is the range of linux flavours and the difficulties of setting up different test enviornments and switching between them.
With virtualisation reaching the desktop now, this process is much easier.
Open source in libraries
These are exciting times for the systems librarian and the library technologist. This is just as well, as libraries have to be nimble in the electronic age. Less than two decades ago the library management technology scene was a pretty fusty area showing little new innovation. The Internet, Web 2.0 and Library 2.0, along with open source software have created new opportunities.
Open source systems bring Web 2.0 to special libraries
Last year I put together a paper for AARL with a multi-dimensional comparison of open source Library Management Systems. In the last 12 months I have completed a round of Koha impelmentations across multi-branch libraries in Health Services in Australia. There is a lot to do in getting an open source system stable, but open source offers many advantages in extendability. Picking an open source system with an active community helps, as we have moved from Koha2 to Koha3 during this period.
Open source come of age for library services
There is a growing excitement among libraries as open source library management systems come of age. With Koha 3 recently released, libraries have a choice of scalable library management systems that will support library networks with highly functional OPAC and library management systems that are Web 2.0 enabled. Over the last month I have implemented several small multi-branch special library networks in Koha 3.0