Request for Comments
December 7-8, 2007—This weekend, 30 open government advocates gathered to develop a set of principles of open government data. The meeting, held in Sebastopol, California, was designed to develop a more robust understanding of why open government data is essential to democracy.
The Internet is the public space of the modern world, and through it governments now have the opportunity to better understand the needs of their citizens and citizens may participate more fully in their government. Information becomes more valuable as it is shared, less valuable as it is hoarded. Open data promotes increased civil discourse, improved public welfare, and a more efficient use of public resources.
The group is offering a set of fundamental principles for open government data. By embracing the eight principles, governments of the world can become more effective, transparent, and relevant to our lives.
CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright-protected content to waive copyright interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright.
In contrast to CC’s licenses that allow copyright holders to choose from a range of permissions while retaining their copyright, CC0 empowers yet another choice altogether – the choice to opt out of copyright and the exclusive rights it automatically grants to creators – the “no rights reserved” alternative to our licenses.
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.
Why ‡biblios?
A rich internet application
Though browser-based, ‡biblios has a very rich user interface and takes advantage of JavaScript toolkits like YUI, ExtJS, Google Gears for local storage of bibliographic records.
Built-in metasearch
Much of cataloging consists of copy-cataloging and so ‡biblios ships with built-in metasearch capability using a web services layer built on the Pazpar2 federated search library. Users can set up and perform cross-database searches on any Z39.50 targets.
Built around library standards
The ‡biblios record editor currently supports MARC21/MARCXML records and utilizes a plugin architecture to easily allow expansion to other formats such as MODS, Dublin Core, etc.
Library Standards Compliant
Built in support for MARC21, MARCXML, Z39.50
Free and Open Source
‡biblios is available under the terms of the GPL software license, which ensures free and open access to use, modification and redistribution.