[ILUG] open source library systems

[Anthony]

> does anyone know of any good open source library systems?  I'm currently
> looking at Koha which is functional but well, my first impressions (and it
> may just be that I haven't delved deeply enough) are a bit on the mediocre
> side.
> 
> http://koha.org/
> 
> I'd like to see what else is around.  Is anyone using Koha, or something
> else?  Preferably web based but I'm open minded.


Padraic, a (non-techie but capable computer user) friend of mine was 
investigating something similar. He's not (yet) a GNU/Linux user but I'd 
say he will be in the future. I knew that he had been installing other 
web-based library software so I forwarded your email to him.  Here's his 
(hopefully useful) reply. I'm also including him in the CC list as I'm 
sure he would find other feedback on this subject to be useful.

Best wishes,
Anthony

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I've set OpenBiblio up on my (windows) computer, which was pretty easy 
even though I've no experience with Apache, MySQL or php (I used 
something called xampp which bundles them all together). I went for 
openbiblio because it seemed very straightforward and will serve the 
needs of a small community library very well - the basic package is 
decent, there's good forum support and people have put out various 
patches and work arounds to catalog things like websites and periodicals 
mare efficiently. Anyway check out http://obiblio.sourceforge.net - 
there's a working demo on the site. (the sites down right now- 20.20 - 
but was working fine this afternoon).

 >From the research I've done Koha seems to be the leading open source 
system - it just looked a bit complicated and there's no great support 
for putting it on Windows - I'm sure that won't put you off but I've 
very little experience on Linux. A company called Liblime have put out a 
modified version of Koha - check them out at http://liblime.com/. A 
third package you might want to look at it Emilda 
(http://www.emilda.org/) from the blurb on the page:

     "Emilda is a complete Integrated Library System that features 
amongst others an OPAC, circulation and administration functions, Z39.50 
capabilities and 100% MARC compatibility. MARC compatibility is achieved 
using Zebra in conjunction with MySQL."

If you're planning on doing any copy- cataloging you should look at 
MarcEdit (http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html/index.html) it's 
vary handy for getting marc records and importing them (into openBiblio 
at least) but I'm afraid it's windows based.

If you want a page which links to content in an organised fashion rather 
than a system for cataloging and circulation then Greenstone might be 
worth looking at -

     " Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing 
digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing 
information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone 
is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University 
of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and 
the Human Info NGO. It is open-source, multilingual software, issued 
under the terms of the GNU General Public License."

It's actualy distributed by UNESCO to help develop third world libraries 
- find out more at www.greenstone.org.


A good general page for open source software for libraries is 
http://www.oss4lib.org/ If you want to read a bit more there's links to 
(some) online artcles at this bibliography: 
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/staff/brenda_chawner/biblio.html

Anyway, I hope some of this helps you out a bit. I'd be interested in 
hearing how you get on since I'm hoping to do a bit more work in this 
area myself.