"Whenever I teach open source to librarians I always start by outlining why libraries are the prefect breeding grounds for open source. What many librarians probably don’t realize is that the open source community actually shares a lot of the same ethics, ideals and characteristics as the library world. I think that Glen Horton put it best in his talk at the 2008 Computers in Libraries conference:"
Weka is a collection of machine learning algorithms for data mining tasks. The algorithms can either be applied directly to a dataset or called from your own Java code. Weka contains tools for data pre-processing, classification, regression, clustering, association rules, and visualization. It is also well-suited for developing new machine learning schemes.
"The end product will be a design document to inform open source library system development efforts, to guide future library system implementations, and to influence current Integrated Library System vendor products."
A group at Lewis & Clark College in Portland are in the process of developing an educational collection of contemporary ceramics images using the photo sharing site Flickr as a back end. This article discusses the evolution of the project, Flickr machine tags, and the concept of Flickr as an application database layer. The article includes code samples for creating and querying machine tags using the Flickr API.
SourceForge.net is the world's largest Open Source software development web site. SourceForge.net provides free hosting to Open Source software development projects with a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications, and code.
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 uses Solr to index and search, and it has a highly configurable Ruby on Rails front-end. Currently, Blacklight can index, search, and provide faceted browsing for MaRC records and several kinds of XML documents, including TEI, EAD, and GDMS. Blacklight was developed at the University of Virginia Library and is made public under an Apache 2.0 license.
There’s a “growing disconnect in what we’re being provided from commercial companies ... and what libraries are starting to realize they need,” he said, but libraries aren’t blameless either: He believes they need to communicate more effectively the features and functionality they require. And just because it’s open source doesn’t mean it’s better. Soon enough, Gibbons suggested, open source innovations might spur competition and eventually result in more and better choices in the consumer market.
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.
Die explosionsartige Entwicklung von freien und Open-Source-Informationsgütern steht im Widerspruch zu der konventionellen Weisheit, dass Märkte und kommerzielle Organisationen für eine effiziente Güterverteilung notwendig sind. Diese Arbeit schlägt einen theoretischen Ansatz zur Erklärung dieses Phänomens vor, der Konzepte der Ökonomie und Theorien der Selbstorganisation aufgreift. Eine einmal erstellte und über das Internet zugänglich gemachte Information kann nicht mehr als knappes Gut betrachtet werden, da sie praktisch ohne Kosten vervielfältigt werden kann. Darüber hinaus profitiert der Urheber von ihrer freien Verbreitung, da dies die Qualität der Information verbessert und sein Ansehen steigert. Dies bietet Menschen bereits einen ausreichenden Anreiz, zu Open-Access-Projekten beizutragen. Im Gegensatz zu herkömmlichen Organisationen sind Open-Access-Communitys offen, dezentralisiert und selbstorganisierend. Koordination wird durch Stigmergie erreicht: Listen mit aktuell anstehenden Arbeiten, "work in progress", führen Interessierte zu den Aufgaben, bei denen ihr Beitrag verspricht, am ertragreichsten zu sein. Dies umgeht sowohl die Notwendigkeit einer zentralisierten Planung als auch einer "unsichtbaren Hand" des Marktes.