Imagine a future when you go to the library with a 5 minute video you've just made about last night's Presidential debates and that librarian says to you:
Starting a blog does not automatically mean that it would be read. Having a blog is just half the equation. What makes it complete is for users to subscribe to its newsfeeds. There needs to be a "voice" -- a personality -- to the blog. If not, it's just another website or online brochure. No links or tags to the blog.
This bibliography has been compiled by Brenda Chawner, School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, as part of her Ph.D. studies. It includes announcements, journal articles, and web documents that are about open source software development in libraries. It also includes articles that describe specific open source applications used in libraries, in particular dSpace, Koha, Greenstone, and MyLibrary.
Nothing is more practical than a good theory. A banal statement, considering that a theory should always enable its users to easily derive the statements they need for practice.
But a theory for catalogs or cataloging? Is that really necessary? A question anyone is likely to ask who has never been confronted with the matter nor considered it with any seriousness.
Using Internet search engines, and knowing their operation is fully automated, people tend to view with skepticism all practical and theoretical effort invested in catalogs. Any good search engine, however, has to be be based on a good theory - though that one may differ quite a bit from a catalog theory.