Dries Buyaert, founder of Drupal, will be speaking at the UK Drupal community’s monthly ‘Drupal Beer and Chat’ on 29 March. The event takes place the last Monday of every month and is a meeting place for anyone and everyone involved in Drupal. Anyone interested in attending is advised to book a place.

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Getting the source out of the bottle: practical implementation of open source applications in the information sector

Venue and date

Bloomsbury suite, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London, WC1H 0XG

Wednesday, 16th June 2010

Seminar Outline

Free open source software is becoming more popular in the information sector, but how good is it for the services we offer? How easy is it to really use the open source software to support and deliver library and information services to our customers? As well as benefits such as cost and flexibility, there is a real opportunity for professionals to use their knowledge of their users’ needs to proactively and collaboratively shape software development – rather than being passive consumers of new technologies and products. This kind of partnership with open source communities can be empowering as it is about ongoing improvements and customisation, rather than just implementing a finished end-product. Whilst not without its drawbacks, this approach also challenges traditional business procurement models. But how do you practically implement open source software in the workplace? The aim of the day will be to highlight and show case open source technologies, focusing on case studies from across the electronic information sector which show how to lead rather than follow in an open source environment.

Further Details

In the light of the UK Conference on open source software for libraries, Ken Chad reports on the growing interest which contrasts sharply with the situation only two years ago.

Link to full article

Mark Hughes, Head of collections at Swansea University and Paul Johnson, Virtual Academic Library Project Manager at South West Wales Higher Education Partnership review the “Breaking the Barriers” conference on 18th May 2009. This article is from Panlibus magazine, Issue 13, Summer 2009.

http://www.talis.com/panlibus/pdfs/Panlibus_13.pdf

This report looks at the state of OSS in local government.

Full Report

Some headlines from the survey:

• 64% believe their council needs to increase its use of open source software (27% agreeing strongly)
• Around half say their council will increase its open source use by 2011
• 370 local government open source deployments identified
• Software licensing costs represent 30-40% of some councils IT budgets
• Why do councils go open source? 75% put lower cost as #1 factor
• Office software is where open source will impact most in local government over the next three years
• 65% believe perceptions of open source being ‘too risky’ stops councils from using open source more widely.

The OLE Project final report is finished.

“A draft of the final report on the OLE Project is now available for community feedback.
Click here to download the full report.“

Interesting article from OSS Watch.

“Open source software has emerged as one of the most important IT movements in recent times. According to a study carried out in 2006 by analysts IDC, ‘Open source is the most significant all-encompassing and long-term trend that the software industry has seen since the early 1980s’, and it is gaining momentum. Evidence of this can be seen in all sectors in the UK, but a severe shortage of skills in this area could limit its future. This document looks at the growth of open source in the UK, and considers the possible effects of this skills shortage on the long-term success of open source, and how the problem might be addressed.”

Click here for the rest of the article

Libraries–the brick-and-mortar institutions that amass book and periodical collections, not software modules, that is–get taken for granted in the Internet age. They have to manage vast arrays of information and lend them out to patrons for free, but they often have to do so with shoestring budgets. Academic institutional libraries may fare better than public libraries, but both have to be cost-conscious customers when it comes to the technical infrastructure that catalogs their collections, manages circulation, and enables staff and the public to search the archives. Not surprisingly, although there are proprietary products available, open source software plays a big role in library management.

See the full article here:

http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/case-studies/26661-check-out-open-source-library-and-collections-management-software

Interesting for anyone in this sector.

http://blogs.liblime.com/open-sesame/archives/609

Here is the link to the complete article

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/06/kuali

A useful report from Dick Boss from December 2008 —

“Open Source’ Integrated Library System Software”

A number of public libraries have been investigating “open source” integrated
library system software. However, the percentage of libraries that would seriously
consider implementing an open source ILS is still small, approximately three percent in a
survey of 80 North American libraries conducted by the author in October of 2008.
Marshall Breeding of the Vanderbilt University Libraries came up with a similar figure
in a much larger international survey in late 2007 (www.librarytechnology.org).

Full report is here …

http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/pla/plapublications/platechnotes/OpensourceILS.pdf