VuFind Open Source Discovery Software Goes Beta

Earlier today, Andrew Nagy on Code4Lib announced Villanova University's new open source discovery tool VuFind is available as beta software (officially release 0.5). Half the blogs and listservs I follow seem to have echoed this announcement by now, so I thought I'd join the crowd.

Checkout the Live Demo to see how well they've incorporated the long list of features librarians are looking for in "2.0" discovery tools, including patron tagging, user comments, links to reviews, and faceted browsing. But it also has (or soon will have) the back-end features it will need to function in the library computing ecosystem: it supports LDAP and database authentication, retrieves holdings status from the local ILS (currently with Endeavor Voyager), with support for other ILSs on the way (SirsiDynix, Evergreen, Koha, and "more to come"). Other features on the way include a script for a nightly data sync with the ILS, and holds and recall features.

It looks to be a very well-designed, feature-rich Solr-based product, and congrats to the team that created it!

VuFind is just one of several such projects (although a sharp-looking one) coming from libraries today. The pace of these projects seems to be picking up, the feature lists are being refined, and the technical issues ironed out. It will be interesting to see how the slower-moving proprietary vendors compete!

LibLime Brings FRBR and edition linking to Koha

Koha support and developer company LibLime announced they've succeeded in adding some impressive new features to the open source Koha library automation system they maintain for the Nelsonville Public Library, namely a new web services module that uses OCLC's xISBN and LibraryThing's ThingISBN to link records for various editions of works.

Would-be readers will now see an "editions" tab that will allow them to see if other editions of the work they're looking for might be available. Another interesting point is that the module allows a library to set a point to automatically regulate usage of xISBN (Which is only free for the first 499 queries per day).

For twenty-five years this has been a glaring flaw in OPAC design, so congratulations to OCLC and LibraryThing for providing practical means to overcome it, and also for LibLime, Nelsonville, and all the good Koha folk out there, for building a way to fix it. Now if only the other parties at the table could take the hint!

WorldCat Local Goes Live!

WorldCat Local, OCLC's entry in the OPAC 2.0 sweepstakes has made its debut (public beta, anyway) at the University of Washington.

Basically, this is a scoped look at WorldCat which uses OCLC's bibliographic records and holdings data and links to a local circulation system for item status information. It thus takes the place of a traditional, locally-hosted OPAC, but it can offer many of the new features libraries now want in OPACS but often can't get from legacy vendors because of the complexity of the old systems.

It's interesting to see how the branding and page links blend in with the rest of the UW's web site. The faceting, links to other libraries, and the ability to directly request an item all are improvements over many of the OPAC 1.0 installs out there.

It's also interesting to observe that it handles non-inverted names like "John Smith" (as opposed to "Smith, John"), which like using a slide rule or sharpening a quill pen, does not seem like a skill much in evidence among today's students.

Another Library goes with Endeca

McMaster University continues to lead the way in Library 2.0 endeavors by announcing a "soft" rollout of its new Endeca-based catalog front-end.

Their catalog is here, with the new interface sharing space with the old Horizon OPAC until the fall.

It's an impressive achievement, and the new interface joins NCSU in moving Endeca into a surprisingly prominent place in the library automation business.

King County Will Evaluate Evergreen

Edward Corrado's ecorrado blog brings the story that the giant King County Library System in Washington State (43 branches, 19 million circs in 2006) is hiring Equinox Software to help them evaluate the open source Evergreen ILS.

Evergreen is certainly getting a lot of attention this year even before the serials/acquisition module is out. But the potential advantages of open source in the multi-vendor, multi-system environments in modern libraries are just too obvious to ignore.

Here's the press release: Library Technology Guides: King County Library System selects Equinox Software, Inc. for Evergreen services

FiveBlogs Meme

Karen Schneider has virtually tagged all library bloggers to list the five "nonbiblioblogs" they follow, all as part of a nascent meme.

Here's my list:


1. TeleRead - all about ebooks

2. The Technology Liberation Front - a "full service technology policy blog" with an emphasis on freedom vs. regulation.

3. O'Reilly Radar - insights from the deep thinkers at O'Reilly Media

4. The End of Cyberspace - thoughtful look at What's Next.

5. Gizmodo - one of several gadget guides I follow.

Think Students are Ready for Free Online Textbooks?

From the Google Operating System Blog comes the story of Freeload Press, a company that purchases the rights to textbooks, adds advertising, then makes copies available online for free (including free pdf downloads), or sells reduced-cost print versions.

Although the ads are distracting, we've all come to accept magazines and newspapers (and websites!) loaded with ads, and there is so much resistance from students to current textbook pricing (and remember that most students have never purchased a hardbound book before), that I can't imagine this not being popular. Instructors would probably like more students to actually use the textbook, but whether publishers and authors agree remains to be seen.

ILS Vendors and the Open Source World

I posted this over on the excellent Information Wants To Be Free blog and would like to expand it a bit here.

"Open Source software may not be for everyone, but the mere presence of OSS products in the library market highlights the premium pricing of the proprietary ILSs. If the vendors can’t handle the re-engineering costs now, just wait a few years until every upgrade bid is compared with OSS alternatives– it could really act as a brake on prices. Vendors could find themselves in a real bind."

"In fact, it seems to me that a valid strategy for an ILS vendor would be to pull a Novell. Rather than try to keep Netware competitive, Novell chose to buy a Linux distribution and migrate their customer base to OSS, where they can benefit from the efforts of the whole community and put their money to use in adding value where their customers can see it. They sell support as well as “official” versions of the software. Would your library buy an Open Source ILS if it was supported by Innovative or SirsiDynix?"

An alternative would be to open source a proprietary ILS and try to build a support community around it.

I think the greater software world has shown that these approaches can work, especially when a company does not have the resources to keep a proprietary product competitive. I think all the major ILS vendors are struggling with the realization that they cannot do what their customers are demanding at prices the customers can afford, which might be why so many are selling out to new owners while their customer bases are still intact.

I think moving to Open Source (one way or another) would provide a viable way for a vendor to meet customer demands while staying in business.

Firefox as Platform, Part 4

As I continue to look at Firefox plug-ins and extensions that contribute to the "Firefox as platform" concept, here is a Blogging plugin called Performancing. I'm using it for this post.

Haven't quite worked out the formatting details, but it seems to work smoothly and the interface seems easy enough.

UPDATE: While chasing down a bad link in this post, I found that this plug-in is now called ScribeFire, and has added some improvements along the way (Blogger support seems smoother, and it also claims added support for the new Wordpress.com API, which I haven't tested). Whatever you call it, it's a great plug-in!

powered by performancing firefox

Libraries - Choice of a New Generation?

From the prize-winning HeyJude blog comes word of an interesting study by the British think tank Demos called "Their Space : education of a digital generation", which discusses the use of digital technologies among children (born in the 1990s and the first that can not remember their first use of a computer) and the implications for education.

There are a number of findings, but the central one seems to be that this generation is using technology in a particular way, and the massive investment in technology for education has been organized in a way which seems determined to work "against the grain" of their practices rather than work with them. The enabling technologies of computers and the Internet are creating a generation more at home with peer-driven learning and self-paced discovery than the hierarchical and formal approach used in schools.

The study suggests learning technologies should be designed to work with the informal learning style that students bring with them to schools, and not try to force them to adopt the practices of the past.

In libraries, this is the "patron is not broken" concept, which is leading to redesign of our catalogs and web sites. Nice to know we're not the only ones facing up to this. It also made me realize that institutions of lifelong learing (libraries) may be just what this generation will need.

OLPC Software News

The OLPC folks have sent out a press release describing the Sugar user interface being developed for the XO.

The hardware is innovative, but it's with the software aspects of the project that you can really see the educational focus of the project and the emphasis on collaborative learning.

Evergreen in the News

Linux.com ran a good summary of the Evergreen project last month-- it was even Slashdotted!

Good to know the word is getting out.

OLPC Laptops to go into production by July

The AP is running a good summary of the OLPC project today, along with news that the XOs will go into production by July.

"Several million are expected to reach Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Thailand and the Palestinian territory."

An exciting way to start the year-- I wonder if people felt this way when the Model T was going into production!

Technology Trends to Watch in 2007

New Year's Day is always a good time to reflect back of the previous year and look ahead to the new one. Last year, for example, I would have predicted that strong new versions of the main Linux distros would have accelerated the adoption of Linux in businesses. This process is going a lot more slowly than I thought it would, but on the other hand, there is enough demand that Microsoft is now in the business of selling Linux to the corporate world, something I never thought I'd see.

So having established my so-so credentials, here are my Fearless Predictions for 2007:

1. OLPC XO launches, and 5 million Linux desktops and e-book readers are put in the hands of students in the developing world. Textbooks in e-book format will follow in country after country-- it's difficult to see how this cannot do to printed textbooks what digital music files are doing to the CD.

2. The Evergreen Open Source ILS continues to pick up new customers/sponsors (and momentum) in the library world. The rapid progress of this project is amazing, and a tribute to the open source model, as well as the bright people behind it.

3. Meanwhile, the Koha Open Source ILS continues to add features, and LibLime's slick packaging approach shows what needs to be done to market this terrific program. A safe prediction: More libraries will discover Koha is 2007.

4. With most proprietary ILS products in the hands of private equity groups (including the recent announcement about SirsiDynix being acquired), and with reduced competition because of recent mergers, ILS vendors will face pressure to raise prices to enhance profitability for their new owners. I think that in conjunction with trends 2 and 3 above, this will cause more libraries to consider open source alternatives at upgrade time.

5. Libraries continue to add online discovery tools (like Aquabrowser, Endeca, and Encore) in an attempt to meet the expectations of patrons accustomed to slicker search methods elsewhere. Eventually, the primitive opacs we all know and (don't) love may be thought of as a staff only function. This can't happen soon enough, IMHO.

6. The continued rapid spread of read-write culture (and thinking back, I had barely heard of YouTube a year ago). The industrial revolution brought us mass "read-only" culture-- books and records produced by the million, broadcast spectra controlled by radio and TV networks, and a film industry dominated by just a few big companies. This century so far is bringing us a far more democratic and decentralized type of mass culture driven by the web and drastic decreases in production costs for content. Libraries struggle sometimes to get everything on best seller lists, but what if instead of the top 40 albums there are 400 or 4000? As the culture gets reconsidered, so must our ideas of collection development.

7. As a result of trend 6, and the rise of the remix and mashup culture, copylefted and open sourced content will spread. As shown by what I suppose will be known as the pioneering months of YouTube, there is an amazing burst of creativity wherever lawyers and digital restrictions aren't. The tensions around this issue will only get worse as the disconnect grows between the technology-driven present-day reality and laws and institutions rooted in the past. In the end, the digitally restricted world will probably decline in importance as culture moves elsewhere. Good for libraries, of course, because it makes sharing so much easier!

8. Desktop Linux continues to spread. Vendors like Novell and Canonical have great desktop Linux products, and Microsoft's Windows Vista presents schools and businesses everywhere with difficult and expensive upgrade decisions. I'll say it again this year, we should see a few key, leading-edge migrations to Linux on the desktop.

9. My New Year's resolution is to not leave posts in "save as draft" limbo-- my optimistic prediction is more posts on Space Age Librarian!

10. Again this year, no flying cars or robot maids with lace aprons, and certainly no seamless interoperability!

Evergreen Picks Up Support

The Open-ILS blog (official blog of the Evergreen open source integrated library automation system) announced yesterday that the University of Windsor has partnered with the Georgia Public Library Service to work on Evergreen's acquisitions module.


Beginning in January 2007, staff from Windsor and GPLS will begin to collaborate on software specifications and development, and the blog notes that a possible "building block" could be provided by the Open Source ERP program OFBiz.

One of the special strengths of open source projects is that the code of other open source projects can be incorporated and used to provide a head start for later projects. Open source programs become constellations of projects working together, and this extension to Evergreen represents a key event.


Another key advantage for open source projects is the ability of users to drive the process. Successful OS projects need an active user community to keep them alive and moving forward. As Evergreen expands its functionality, it will need strong support from all levels of the library world to help it succeed. This move is a great step forward. Happy New Year, indeed!

Some thoughts on libraries and the future of publishing

Science Fiction author Cory Doctorow wrote an interesting column last week on Forbes.com. He has chosen to publish electronic copies of his works under a Creative Commons license that allows free copying and distribution.

Users/readers have downloaded over 700,000 copies of his first book, translated in into several languages, formatted it for various online devices and uses (including the Djvu scanned document format!), and created two competing audio book adaptations. His other books have been similarly licensed, with similar results.

Doctorow still sells print copies of his works, and he figures that while giving away electronic copies may cost some sales to online readers, others decide to purchase print copies. Mainly, though, he profits from the exposure he gets from the user community that has grown up around discussing and distributing his books online.

I've heard it said that for most artists, musicians, and writers the real problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity. Doctorow (with his print publisher's permission) used free online distribution to overcome this.

But it's more than just a stunt. "You sure can't force a reader to pay for access to information anymore," he states. Comparing this to the problem that free radio broadcasting posed for entertainers of the early twentieth century, and the elaborate tracking and licensing systems that evolved to assure the livelihood of the performers, he states that while the future of publishing is hard to predict, thanks to the Internet, "There has never been a time when more people were reading more words by more authors. "

For libraries, this points out several problems. First, although "free" certainly works for libraries, the community nature of some publishing projects makes the print version something of a digest. In some fields of scholarly publishing, the copy of record is the online copy, often including vast stores of test data. The print copy is just a sometimes convenient legacy.

How do libraries fit into this world where even in "book" publishing the printed work is no longer central? The example of radio, which like the Internet was fast, ephemeral and democratic, is not comforting for libraries. The "problem" it posed was solved for performers, but libraries (except for a few highly specialized archival libraries) have largely ignored it.

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OLPC Receives Test Build X0-1

Christopher Blizzard reports that the OLPC people have received the first hand-built X0-1 "Test build" device destined for "destructive testing" over the next few months.

There are interesting pictures posted on the OLPC wiki.

The pictures show the display in both black and white and color mode, the touchpads (including the one intended for use with a stylus), and one of the keyboard layouts.

Most interesting to me, was this photo showing the comparative size of the device when placed on a "normal" laptop. It is clearly scaled for little hands.

It is so exciting to see this project hit important milestones with such apparent success.

OLPC X0-1 : the new Carnegie?

Technology Review has a good article on the OPLC X0-1 (yes, that seems to be the official new name), which compares the project to Andrew Carnegie's project to build libraries across the United States and Great Britain from a hundred years ago.

I'm glad more people are seeing this connection-- the OLPC project is no more about computers than Carnegie's project was about architecture. It's all about making information available to all, or nearly all. Remember that if the OLPC really does meet its goals of putting tens of millions of these devices in the hands of students around the world, each one will be an e-book reader. This will revolutionize publishing, and not only in the developing world.

OLPC 2B1/XO wins "Best of What's New" award

Popular Science magazine has selected the OLPC's 2B1 (or maybe it's now called the XO) as a "Grand Award" winner in it's Best of What's New 2006 article.