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)