Friday, October 20, 2006

Toll:Libstat: Web-based System for Tracking your Library Reference Queries



Libstats is a simple, web-based system for tracking library statistics and questions your librarians have answered. For recording simple question counts, Libstats is as fast as making hash marks on paper. The knowledge base for your Reference section. Reports generation in different parameters

You can track from multiple locations or branches.

Developed in the University of Wisconsin's library system

Libstats is open-source software: it's free for anyone to download and use. In fact, if Libstats doesn't fit your needs, you're free to modify it and make it exactly what you need.


System Requirements

Server:

  • A web server. I recommend Apache.
  • PHP. Versions 4.3+ and 5.0.2+ are recommended.
  • MySQL 4.0 or greater.

Client:

  • Any reasonably modern web browser.

Charles Darwin's works now available online




The project run by Cambridge University has digitised some 50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images of original publications - all of it searchable.

Other texts appearing online for the first time include the first editions of the Journal Of Researches (1839), The Descent Of Man (1871), The Zoology Of The Voyage Of HMS Beagle (1838-43) and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of the Origin Of Species, the pivotal tome that elucidated his thoughts on evolution. There is no charge to use the website

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Wedgets: personalized information homepages

With widgets, users are able to customize a page to be able to get their sites and services in personalized homepages.Similar to feeds and syndication, widgets can save a user time by making everything they care about on the web easily accessible in one place.Opera web browser offers desktop widgets. Google Gadgets.Microsoft also offers Gadgets for Windows Live. IAmAlpha.com is an AOL widget initative for AIM Pages which launched with a makeover in May 2006, Widgetbox

"The idea really rings clear on a personalized homepage which allow users to aggregate and create their own configuration of widgets. In a recent TechCrunch article Mike Arrington explained the value in a widget-driven personal homepage, Netvibes, as it positions all your favorites in front of you in at one time in saying:

“Like Google search, the best thing about Netvibes is that it has no problem with me quickly leaving the site to take care of other business. And that’s why it’s earned my loyalty as a user.”

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

"librfid" : Free Software RFID library

librfid is a Free Software RFID library. It implements the PCD (reader) side protocol stack of ISO 14443 A, ISO 14443 B, ISO 15693, Mifare Ultralight and Mifare Classic. Support for iCODE and other 13.56MHz based transponders is planned.

librfid currently supports the following readers:
  • The Omnikey CardMan 5121 RFID
  • The OpenPCD reader (recommended
Presentation:

RFID - overview of protocols, librfid implementation and passive sniffing


The number of deployments of RFID based solutions is growing every day. Still, detailed low-level knowledge of the involved protocols is rare, even within the hacker community.

The first part of this presentation describes the two commonly-deployed ISO standards 14443 and 15693 - from physical layer up to session layer. It will then continue to look at the typical architecture of RFID readers.

The second part will cover "librfid", the GPL licensed Free Software implemetation of an ISO 14443 and 15693 host-side stack.

The third part will look at our current progress in developing hardware and software defined radio (SDR) based passive sniffing of the RFID radio interface. After all, who wouldn't want to have "tcpdump" like functionality for RFID?

  • Authors:

Harald Welte Milosch Meriac


ISO14443, ISO15693, their GPL librfid implementation and passive sniffing hardware

The presentation will cover an introduction into the two popular RFID Standards, ISO14443 and ISO15693, as well as the author's Free Software implementation "librfid"





Libraries with RSS -Enabled catalog -New Wiki Created

The Shifted Librarian has created a wiki page for adding examples of Library Catalogs that generate RSS feeds. a new section on the LibSuccess wiki for examples of library catalogs that offer live RSS feeds.

MyCoRe Release 1.3.0





MyCoRe Release 1.3.0 - 2006-10-17
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=92005&package_id=97198

MyCoRe is an open source project which provides a system for digital libraries and content repositories (>> CoRe). Different universities participate as part of a cooperation in the MyCoRe project. MyCoRe aims to develop a software core ("core") that can be extended and adapted to different environments ("My" for the local adaptation). MyCoRe will establish Implementations for all key functions of digital libraries so that simple applications can be realized by configuration instead of programming. For more complicated applications on different levels the system will provide interfaces for particular modules or for links to special database-backends.

The system is based on Java-classlibraries, XML-technics and different database-backends - commercial solutions as IBM Content Manager and IBM DB2 as well as open source solutions as MySQL and XMLB-databases. This variety allows Implementations not only for reduced archive-functions on the basis of purely open source solutions but also for advanced solutions on the basis of the IBM Content Manager.

Home page:http://www.mycore.de/content/below/index.xml

Download:http://www.mycore.de/content/main/download.xml

Koha-2.2.6 Released

Koha is the first Open-Source Integrated Library System.

Koha is a full-featured open-source ILS. Developed initially in New Zealand by Katipo Communications Ltd and first deployed in January of 2000 for Horowhenua Library Trust, it is currently maintained by a team of software providers and library technology staff from around the globe.


Koha 2.2.6 has been released & is available at :
http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/koha/koha-2.2.6.tar.gz



Changes:
Many bugs in Acquisitions have been fixed, and online help has been added. Serial items can now be created on the fly. There is a new option to include book covers, description, and reviews for items from Amazon.com.

BUGFIXES

=== ACQUISITION ===
* Acquisition has been deeply investigated & tested. should work
fine. (there was complex problems depending on prices rebates, VAT
charging,...)

=== CATALOGUE ===
* Major bugfixes in encoding handling for MARC21 : there was bugs
using the MARC21 indicators for character encoding. They should have been
fixed for now, and koha 2.2.6 handles MARC21 with unicode correctly.

=== CATALOGUING ===
* result page display was incorrect when searching a biblio before
adding a new one.
* no more saving of an empty field in the DB
* Fix for splitting up fixed fields containing | in them causing
* An item that is on loan can't be deleted anymore.

=== CIRCULATION ===
* minor bugfix : Adding 0 before days and months in order to make
date comparison work.

=== MEMBERS ===
* fixed a but to be able to modify an Institution.

=== PARAMETERS ===
* adding page facility in book funds.

Homepage:
http://www.koha.org/
Tar/GZ:
http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/koha/
Changelog:
http://www.koha.org/about-koha/news/nr1161090735.html
CVS tree (cvsweb):
http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewcvs/?root=koha
Bug tracker:
http://bugs.koha.org
Mailing list archive:
http://lists.katipo.co.nz/public/koha/
Demo site:
http://koha.org/showcase/