Projects

Koha Library Automation Package

Koha is a Library Automation Package (Integrated Library Management System) released under the General Public License (GPLv3 or later)

VuFind

VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC to include: * Catalog Records * Digital Library Items ... [More] * Institutional Repository * Institutional Bibliography * Other Library Collections and Resources VuFind is completely modular so you can implement just the basic system, or all of the components. And since it's open source, you can modify the modules to best fit your needs or you can add new modules to extend your resource offerings. [Less]

Blacklight

A next generation library catalog written in ruby, using solr as the underlying search engine. All you have to do is export your marc records, index them with the scripts provided, start up ruby on rails, and you're on your way to faceted browsing bliss.

Discover-Aristotle

A Django-based bibliographic, repository, and access framework for building cataloging applications.

meercat

IntroductionLarge libraries often contain multiple catalogs, digital repositories, and other data sources. Generally, each of these must be searched independently or through federated search systems. The goal of Meercat is to provide a metadata harvesting and management system that can maintain up ... [More] to date copies of the metadata in one location so that it can either be harvested by another service or used directly for discovery and retrieval of detailed resource metadata. The open source Lucene extension, Solr, is used to facilitate discovery and there is a REST interface to access more detailed information on resources. TechnologiesLanguagesThe core system is written in Python. Harvesters and storage are independent of any runtime system, but the jobs and scheduling system requires Twisted. XSLT is used to transform chunks of metadata from one format to another. HarvestersCurrent harvester sources implemented are Voyager ILS catalogs, SFX electronic resources, and metalib databases. We plan on adding a harvester for OAI-PMH servers. All harvesters implement an API and more can be added and integrated easily as additional Python modules. Queriable HarvestersQueriable harvesters from data sources such as the Voyager ILS allow Meercat to stay current with circulation information about physical resources. Queriable harvesters are an extension of the base harvester API and add the ability to incrementally harvest resources and to harvest only resources that have been modified in a certain time frame. Solr (Search Indexing)Apache Solr is used to facilitate discovery. Simple metadata such as title, creator and description are indexed directly in Solr while some complex data such as location and status are reduced to simple fields that can be indexed by Solr for faceting and filtering of search results. The metadata is transformed using a MapReduce framework in Twisted, an asynchronous, multi-threaded Python library. Top Level ComponentsMeercat is comprised of reusable Python packages that can be replaced or upgraded independently of the rest of the system. The core package types are: meercat meercat.harvester meercat.job meercat.server meercat.solr meercat.storage meercat.ui Related ProjectsOther projects that we are of aware of that are looking at library resource discovery are: Extensible Catalog Blacklight VuFind [Less]

kochief

Kochief is a discovery interface for local and remote collections. Records are indexed in Solr and presented with the Django web framework. Tools are in development for the management of a local catalog. HistoryKochief began with Casey Durfee's Open Source Endeca in 250 lines or less ... [More] presentation at the code4lib 2007 conference, where he claimed to provide faceted features similar to the Endeca and AquaBrowser experiences using Solr and Django. Casey's work focused strictly on the Dewey-based Horizon system he works with at the Seattle Public Library. After downloading his code, Dan Scott was able to tweak the code to work with his LC-based Unicorn system at the Laurentian University Library. He wanted to demonstrate a faceted search interface to my colleagues, and he also needed a backup catalogue because the production ILS had a nasty habit of dying at inconvenient times. He called the project "Fac-Back-OPAC". Casey gave his blessing to do whatever Dan wanted with the code, so he made it available under the Apache 2.0 license, started with Casey's original code in the project SVN repository, and began checking in changes. Mike Beccaria, who also attended Casey's presentation, quickly joined the project as he had been working on his own fork of Casey's code and has added several enhancements. He works at Paul Smith's College and currently uses Kochief for their book catalog. You're welcome to join us too! News2009/04/04: Project moved from Fac-Back-OPAC to Kochief. 2008/01/31: A screencast of fbo being installed from start to finish in windows is available. Download, unzip, and open fbowindowsinstall.html. 2007/10/02: Casey's code for Helios has been committed to the Helios branch of the Subversion repository. 2007/10/02: Gabe Farrell has been added as another Fac-Back-OPAC developer. Gabe plans to clean up some of the non-Pythonic code and improve the Django project structure, for starters. Welcome Gabe! 2007/10/01: "Fac-Back-OPAC: An Open Source Interface to Your Library System", an article about Fac-Back-OPAC written by Mike Beccaria and Dan Scott, has been published online by Computers in Libraries. 2007/08/23: Casey has joined the project, and plans to contribute Helios (the most up-to-date version of his original code, featuring tag clouds and other goodness). Hurray! ExamplesPaul Smith's College Book Catalog Drexel Libraries Collections ChangesCasey's code was pretty good to start with, but we're trying to make it even better: The code is now i18n-compatible, so you can offer the catalog with support for multiple languages. I have included a French translation of the interface. Atom and RSS feeds are available for searches. A detailed item view within FacBackOPAC is an option if you don't want to link to your existing catalogue for a detailed item display. DetailsAt the moment, the code needs lots more work, but the following leaps out at me: Document the steps you need to follow to get a FacBackOPAC instance running. The high-level details have been written, but some pointers on localizing the interface would make sense. Find some reasonable media format icons to bundle with the code. Pointers to good sources of freely redistributable icons would be appreciated! Build a working implementation of tracking cataloging activity (in Unicorn, the plan is to scan the transaction logs) to incrementally add or delete items. Add support for other integrated library systems. We'll need to depend on support from others for this. [Less]