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Joanne S

Scot Colford, "Explaining free and Open Source software," - 0 views

www.asis.org/...DecJan09_Colford.html

IMT122 Reading List Essential Reading Operating Systems Mobile Platforms & Software Week 02 Topic 02 IMT122

shared by Joanne S on 03 Sep 12 - Cached
  • Ten criteria must be met in order for a software distribution to be considered open source:
  • Free redistribution
  • the source code freely available to developers.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The license must permit modifications
  • Integrity of the author's source code
  • No discrimination against persons or groups
  • No discrimination against fields of endeavor
  • same license must be passed on to others when the program is redistributed.
  • License must not be specific to a product
  • License must not restrict other software
  • License must be technology-neutral
  • list of the nine most widely used licenses is
  • Apache Software License 2.0 (www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html) New BSD License (www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php) GNU General Public License (GPL) (www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) (www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html) MIT License (www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php) Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL) (www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html) Common Development and Distribution License (www.sun.com/cddl/cddl.html) Common Public License 1.0 (www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-cpl.html)  Eclipse Public License (www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html) [5].
  • common misconception, alluded to above, is that since the source code is freely distributed without royalty or licensing fee, open source applications are free of cost.
  • Free and open source software application users, on the other hand, must rely on development communities for support.
  • The pervasiveness of the World Wide Web guarantees that nearly every information organization is using free or open source software to perform some function.
Joanne S

The Code4Lib Journal - How Hard Can It Be? : Developing in Open Source - 0 views

journal.code4lib.org/...1638

IMT122 Essential Reading Week 06 Task 06 Koha

shared by Joanne S on 02 Oct 12 - Cached
  • We experienced freedom to explore alternate avenues, to innovate, to take risks in ways that would have been difficult under the direct control of a district council.
  • patrons made it clear that while they appreciated that computers were a necessary part of a modern library, they did not consider them the most important part.
  • Our overall objective was to source a library system which: could be installed before Y2K complications immobilised us, was economical, in terms of both initial purchase and future license and maintenance support fees, ran effectively and fast by dial-up modem on an ordinary telephone line, used up-to-the minute technologies, looked good, and was easy for both staff and public to use, took advantage of new technology to permit members to access our catalogue and their own records from home, and let us link easily to other sources of information – other databases and the Internet. If we could achieve all of these objectives, we’d be well on the way to an excellent service.
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  • "How hard can it be" Katipo staff wondered, "to write a library system that uses Internet technology?" Well, not very, as it turned out.
  • Koha would thus be available to anyone who wanted to try it and had the technical expertise to implement it.
  • fairly confident that we already had a high level of IT competence right through the staff, a high level of understanding of what our current system did and did not do.
  • ensure the software writers did not miss any key points in their fundamental understanding of the way libraries work.
  • The programming we commissioned cost us about 40% of the purchase price of an average turn-key solution.
  • no requirement to purchase a maintenance contract, and no annual licence fees.
  • An open source project is never finished.
  • Open source projects only survive if a community builds up around the product to ensure its continual improvement. Koha is stronger than ever now, supported by active developers (programmers) and users (librarians)
  • There are a range of support options available for Koha, both free and paid, and this has contributed to the overall strength of the Koha project.
  • Vendors like Anant, Biblibre, ByWater, Calyx, Catalyst, inLibro, IndServe, Katipo, KohaAloha, LibLime, LibSoul, NCHC, OSSLabs, PakLAG, PTFS, Sabinet, Strategic Data, Tamil and Turo Technology take the code and sell support around the product, develop add-ons and enhancements for their clients and then contribute these back to the project under the terms of the GPL license.
  • FRBR [5] arrangement, although of course it wasn’t called that 10 years ago, it was just a logical way for us to arrange the catalogue. A single bibliographic record essentially described the intellectual content, then a bunch of group records were attached, each one representing a specific imprint or publication.
  • The release of Koha 3.0 in late 2008 brought Koha completely into the web 2.0 age and all that entails. We are reconciled to taking a small step back for now, but the FRBR logic is around and RDA should see us back where want to be in a year or so – but with all the very exciting features and opportunities that Koha 3 has now.
  • In the early days, the Koha list appeared to have been dominated by programmers but I have noticed a lot more librarians participating now
  • "Adopt technology that keeps data open and free, abandon[ing] technology that does not." The time is right for OSS.
  • Joanne S on 02 Oct 12
     
    For more information about Koha and how it was developed, see: Ransom, J., Cormack, C., & Blake, R. (2009). How Hard Can It Be? : Developing in Open Source. Code4Lib Journal, (7). Retrieved from http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/1638
Joanne S

K. G Schneider, "The Thick of the Fray: Open Source Software in Libraries in the First ... - 0 views

www.asis.org/...DecJan09_Schneider.html

IMT122 Reading List Week 02 Essential Reading Topic 02 IMT122 Open Source Software

shared by Joanne S on 03 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • the vast majority of libraries continue to rely on legacy proprietary systems
  • libraries using open source integrated library systems indicates that the vast majority of libraries continue to rely on legacy proprietary systems
  • there are at least a dozen active OSS projects based in or with their genesis in library organizations
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • xCatalog
  • LibraryFind
  • Blackligh
  • iVia,
  • What makes OSS different from proprietary software is that it is free in every sense of the word: free as in “no cost,” free as in “unencumbered” and free as in “not locked up.”
  • questioned whether OSS is overall less expensive than its proprietary counterparts and has called for libraries to look hard at cost factors
  • OSS projects are thriving communities with leaders, followers, contributors, audiences and reputation systems.
  • Like so many things librarians hold dear – information, books and library buildings themselves – OSS is open, available and visible for all to see
  • OSS presents important opportunities for libraries
  • This is the world we want to be in again. It will not always be easy, and there will be a few spectacular failures. But there will also be spectacular successes – and this time, they will happen in the open.
Joanne S

Reprogramming The Museum | museumsandtheweb.com - 0 views

www.museumsandtheweb.com/...reprogramming_the_museum

IMT122 Essential Reading Week 08 Topic 07 IMT122 Reading List Portals Widgets and Remix

shared by Joanne S on 05 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Powerhouse experie
  • her APIs
  • Flickr AP
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • Thomson Reuters OpenCalais
  • OCLC's WorldCat
  • Before we began our work on the Commons on Flickr, some museum colleagues were concerned that engaging with the Flickr community would increase workloads greatly. While the monitoring of the site does take some work, the value gained via the users has far outweighed any extra effort. In some cases, users have dated images for us.
  • In subsequent use of the Flickr API, we appropriated tags users had added to our images, and now include them in our own collection database website (OPAC). We also retrieved geo-location data added to our images for use in third party apps like Sepiatown and Layar.
  • In our case the purpose of creating an API was to allow others to use our content.
  • So consider the questions above not in the context of should we or shouldn't we put our data online (via an API or otherwise) but rather in the context of managing expectations of the data's uptake.
  • Steps to an API
  • several important things which had to happen before we could provide a public web API. The first was the need to determine the licence status of our content.
  • The drive to open up the licensing of our content came when, on a tour we conducted of the Museum's collection storage facilities for some Wikipedian
  • This prompted Seb Chan to make the changes required to make our online collection documentation available under a mix of Creative Commons licences. (Chan, April 2009)
  • Opening up the licensing had another benefit: it meant that we had already cleared one hurdle in the path to creating an API.
  • The Government 2.0 Taskforce (http://gov2.net.au/about/) was the driver leading us to take the next step.
  • "increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information"
  • the first cultural institution in Australia to provided a bulk data dump of any sort.
  • The great thing about this use is that it exposes the Museum and its collection to the academic sector, enlightening them regarding potential career options in the cultural sector.
  • I will briefly mention some of the technical aspects of the API now for those interested. In line with industry best practice the Powerhouse Museum is moving more and more to open-source based hosting and so we chose a Linux platform for serving the API
  • Images are served from the cloud as we had already moved them there for our OPAC, to reduce outgoing bandwidth from the Museum's network.
  • Once we had the API up and running, we realised it would not be too much work to make a WordPress plug-in which allowed bloggers to add objects from our collection to their blogs or blog posts. Once built, this was tested internally on our own blogs. Then in early 2011 we added it to the WordPress plugin directory: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/powerhouse-museum-collection-image-grid/
  • One of the main advantages the API has over the data dump is the ability to track use.
  • It is also worth noting that since the API requests usually do not generate pages that are rendered in a browser it is not possible to embed Google Analytics tracking scripts in the API's output.
  • y requiring people to sign up using a valid email address before requesting an API key we are able to track API use back to individuals or organisations.
  • Concerns that people would use the API inappropriately were dealt with by adding a limit to the number of requests per hour each key can generate
  • An Application Programming Interface (API) is a particular set of rules and specifications that a software program can follow to access and make use of the services and resources provided by another particular software program
  • Joanne S on 05 Oct 12
     
    Dearnley, L. (2011). Repreogramming the museum. In Museums and the Web 2011 : Proceedings. Presented at the Museums and the Web 2011, Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics. Retrieved from http://conference.archimuse.com/mw2011/papers/reprogramming_the_museum
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