Category Archives: Software

Sandboxes

Posted on 2 April 2008 by Rick Mason

A couple of posts about sandboxes have caught my eye: LISNews posted about Peter Morville (writer of Ambient Findability, which if you haven’t read – you should) and his Flickr “sandbox for collecting search examples, patterns, and anti-patterns.” Roy Tennant … Continue reading →

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Web 2.0 Tools

Posted on 30 March 2008 by Rick Mason

Teaching a Dog New Tricks is a post by Michelle Boule on ALA TechSource that contains a great overview of what good Web 2.0 tools have in common.

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Announcing Scriblio on Libology

Posted on 30 March 2008 by Rick Mason

Libology’s Scriblio installation. Scriblio, the open-source Library OPAC that runs on a WordPress installation, has been installed on Libology.  Several notes about this software installation: The library catalog contained within this installation of Scriblio is Capital University’s, located in Columbus, … Continue reading →

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Announcing Libology

Posted on 30 March 2008 by Rick Mason

And now the announcement I alluded to a couple of weeks ago… Libology.com is a new web site that I have begun work on.   The focus of the site is described by its tag line : “Tools and Ideas for … Continue reading →

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LibraryLookup

Posted on 14 March 2008 by Rick Mason

LibraryLookup is a nifty tool that creates a bookmarklet that automatically searches whatever library catalog you configure it to use.  The bookmarklet generator has twenty ILS packages in their list, and they offer to at least attempt to configure others … Continue reading →

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Tim Berners-Lee and DataPortability

Posted on 29 February 2008 by Rick Mason

In a long interview on the state of the semantic web, Tim Berners-Lee (if you don’t recognize the name, you should really read this) briefly discussed DataPortability, the ability to move information freely and easily from one site to another: … Continue reading →

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Online Office Software

Posted on 27 February 2008 by Rick Mason

None of this is new, but I encountered a reminder of how quickly online software is becoming more and more useful: Zoho Writer (part of the Zoho collection of online tools) has been updated, and now supports saving in the … Continue reading →

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Courseware, Web 2.0 and Libraries

Posted on 26 February 2008 by Rick Mason

Last September I wrote about Libguides, an online service that creates web 2.0-style offerings for library web sites. I was impressed with the quality of their offerings, but had misgivings about the cost, especially when one considers that a library … Continue reading →

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Evergreen Acquisitions

Posted on 21 February 2008 by Rick Mason

Evergreen has announced their progress on their Acquisitions portion of the open-source ils.  They are on target to have a functional acquisitions/serials capability by summer! Take a look at their progress, noting that their vanilla interface is only in place … Continue reading →

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Recipes for a 5-Star Library

Posted on 11 February 2008 by Rick Mason

Recipes for a 5-Star Library is the latest “cookbook” from the MaintainIT project.  The cookbooks are pdf files that are free to use The project focuses on public computers in libraries, and their Library Spotlight articles are drawn from real-world … Continue reading →

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Day of the Blog

Posted on 8 February 2008 by Rick Mason

This will be the eighth post today, possibly a record. Not that I was trying… there were just too many interesting bloggable items, and for once there was enough time to post them all. In addition, and the purpose of … Continue reading →

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EZProxy Find and Replace

Posted on 7 February 2008 by Rick Mason

If you don’t like something about one of your web interfaces, and if you are running EZProxy, you can use a “Find and Replace” feature to replace any part of the web page code with whatever you would like in … Continue reading →

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Web 3.0, or just the fulfillment of the promise of 2.0?

Posted on 28 January 2008 by Rick Mason

Web 3.0: Chicken Farms on the Semantic Web is an article by Jim Hendler on the early signs of what he is calling Web 3.0.  The title caught my attention, natch, and so I read the article with great interest. … Continue reading →

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Library Training Game

Posted on 23 January 2008 by Rick Mason

Within Range , a training game from Carnegie Mellen University Libraries, has several strikes against it : it is flash-based, it only trains in LC classification, and it was rated “worst game” on reddit.com. Otherwise, it is a pretty good … Continue reading →

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Indiana Open Source ILS Initiative

Posted on 13 January 2008 by Rick Mason

This announcement by the Indiana State Library and the Hussey Mayfield Memorial Public Library in Zionsville is significant : they aim to make Indiana the third statewide implementation of the Evergreen ILS, assuming that it meets their needs. Third??? Well, … Continue reading →

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NetRenderer

Posted on 12 January 2008 by Rick Mason

NetRenderer is a service that will show you how web pages display using Internet Explorer versions 5.5, 6, and 7. This is a great, great tool for web page design, especially since pre-7 versions of Internet Explorer are notoriously tricky … Continue reading →

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OCLC acquires EZProxy

Posted on 11 January 2008 by Rick Mason

EZProxy, the proxy server created by a librarian for libraries, has been acquired by OCLC. OCLC has been doing some interesting things in the past couple of years… and indications are they will be doing even more in the next … Continue reading →

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Perceptions 2007

Posted on 10 January 2008 by Rick Mason

Perceptions 2007: An International Survey of Library Automation contains the results of a survey conducted by Marshall Breeding.  He explored the relationship between libraries and their Integrated Library Systems (ILS). The results are interesting.  Without going into my own views … Continue reading →

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Open Source Living

Posted on 27 December 2007 by Rick Mason

Open Source Living is a directory of open source software. Directories are nothing new, with SourceForge and FreshMeat leading the lists.  However, most directories are chock full of software not fully fleshed out, or with so many choices that the … Continue reading →

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LENS – University of Chicago

Posted on 19 December 2007 by Rick Mason

LENS is an AquaBrowser online catalog installation at the University of Chicago library that has just gone live, albeit in beta. It is an impressive catalog interface, showing what can be done with our existing cataloging, good software, and an … Continue reading →

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