CHeriCoS

Recently there was a discussion (in german) on Integrated Library Systems available as Open Source at the INetBib Mailing-List. In one of the posts Andre Hagenbruch pointed to the final 2008 issue (Vol. 44, 8) of the Library Technology Reports that deals with Open Source Integrated Library Systems. During the discussion some FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Library Systems and OPACs where mentioned. Some of them I already knew, some of them I did not know about:

• Koha Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha's impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base.
• Evergreen Evergreen is an enterprise-class library automation system that helps library patrons find library materials, and helps libraries manage, catalog, and circulate those materials, no matter how large or complex the libraries.
• OpenBiblio OpenBiblio is an easy to use, automated library system written in PHP containing OPAC, circulation, cataloging, and staff administration functionality.
• PMB PMB: a unique ILS. PMB complies with the rules of library science. It respects the UNIMARC standard, the recommendation 995 and enables the import of notices from BDP and from all databases.
• Blacklight Blacklight is an open source OPAC (online public access catalog). That means libraries (or anyone else) can use it to allow people to search and browse their collections online.

Blacklight is one example of the growing use of Lucene and Solr for OPACs and Digital Library Systems. If you want more take a look at the comprehensive overview of open source systems for libraries provided by oss4lib.org.

After doing it's task for many weeks the cron job for updating drupal stopped working. I tried to run it manually without success. Instead the log told me that I was trying to run a cron job that was already running. Uhm? Okay, after some research I found this solution:

1. Connect to your database
2. Delete rows where name='cron_semaphore' or name='cron_last' from the 'variable' table
3. Delete row where cid='variable' from the 'cache' table.
4. Run cron manually and see if it works

At least this worked in my case. This behaviour can be caused by some modules that are integrated within the cron process. If - for example - the feed aggregator updates a feed during cron run which is very large and/or slow, sometimes this process could not be finished before PHP makes a timeout. In this case the cron is interrupted and you will get the mentioned message. In my case it was the pingback module which updated all pings at cron run. I switch it to back manual update, and my cron runs happily ever after.

The fine Open Source Collection Management Software known as OpenCollection until now has renamed to CollectiveAccess. As they say the renaming was caused by a dispute with a former project partner:

However, a former institutional project partner believes that the name "OpenCollection" itself (and only the name - not the software) is not free. They believe that they have some ownership interest in the name which competes with the Project’s ownership interest. After some consideration we have concluded that, while we clearly own the name, we would prefer to put our energy into continuing development of useful software tools for the community rather than waste resources debating the status of a label.

Collective Access is an Open Source Software based on PHP/mySQL and is developed by a company called whirl-i-gig. It's the only Collection Management System available open source that fits professional needs (as far as I now). It is very easy to install and to administer, but there is also professional (paid) support if you need one.