Zotero 1.5 Beta has been released!

When I attended OneBigLibrary Unconference last summer, Trevor Owens gave a talk (un-talk?) on this version of Zotero and some of the new features and ideas that would be part of it (my post about it is here).  It has come to fruition, and it can change the way you do research (especially group research).  See the video for a great overview.

In addition,  Peter Murray (a.k.a. the Disruptive Library Technology Jester) has already set up a way to distribute your own Zotero citations via an RSS feed.  It is a great sign of success for a project like Zotero when people are creating mashups when your product is just a few days old.  Think of the ways that this could be used to promote library services, especially if your library software doesn’t do RSS.

I have loaded another piece of library software on Libology : OpenBiblio.  It is an open source ILS (Integrated Library System) designed for schools, churches, and smaller libraries.

I am impressed with it so far.  It doesn’t have a lot, but what is there works fast, and the software seems very stable. It has circulation, cataloging, and administrative modules, as well as a basic reporting tool.  You can see the main screen here (although you need a login to actually go into the modules themselves… if you are curious, I can set you up with something temporary… let me know)

Most of all, it is written in php and runs on a mysql database, meaning that I can modify pretty much any part of it, given time and incentive.  I have a desire to update the Opac most of all:  it is table-based, and I know that it could be much more flexible and usable (not to mention standards compliant) with some adaptation.  Can you say microformats?

There are currently about 1800 items in the collection, which belongs to a church which is tired of paying a three-figure annual support fee for 10-year-old software.  The collection consists primarily of Christian materials, so keep that in mind when you check out the Opac.

The Evergreen ILS went live this morning in 252 Georgia libraries!

Evergreen is an Open Source Integrated Library System (ILS) that the Georgia Public Library System has been developing over the past couple of years. The impact of this on the state of library software could be tremendous. Not only did they bypass all of the major vendors (because it would have meant that many, many libraries would have needed to change far too many of their policies and practices), but they have created a flexible system that allows the hundreds of libraries that will use it the ability to configure it the way they need/want.

This is the open source project that I have watched with the most interest. Congrats on reaching this major milestone!

Their press release is available here in MS Word format.