Working Code Wins Support
By Jay Datema
-- Library Journal, 4/15/2007
Responding to increasing ILS market consolidation, 140 international library developers demonstrated alternatives and supplements to library software at the second annual code4lib conference in Athens, GA, February 27–March 2, 2007. Karen Schneider, interim associate director for technology and research at Florida State University, Tallahassee, challenged attendees to sell open source software to directors in terms of solutions, since the larger issue is saving digital information.
Erik Hatcher, author of Lucene in Action, discussed using Apache Solr, the open source search engine Lucene, and faceted browser Flare to construct new front ends for library catalogs. Hatcher also led a free preconference for 80 librarians who brought exported MARC records, including from Villanova University, PA; University of Virginia (UVa), Charlottesville; and other facilities, to build an open source OPAC.
Copy-wrong
The conference also offered several presentations. BibApp, an “institutional bibliography” written in Ruby on Rails, an open source web frameworks, by Nate Vack and Eric Larson, two University of Wisconsin–Madison librarians, received plaudits. The freely available prototype applicationcurrently relies on engineering citation data to show popular journals, publishers, citation types, and which publishers researchers are working with. “This is copy-wrong, which is sometimes what you have to do to construct digital library projects. Then you get money to license it,” Larson said.
Casey Durfee, web applications developer at Seattle PL, presented “Endeca in 250 lines of code or less,” a prototype of faceted searching. The new front end sits on top of a Horizon catalog and uses Python and Solr to display results, including subject, format, and more.
Controversially, Luis Salazar discussed using Linux to power computing in the Howard County, MD, public library system. The former National Security Agency systems administrator spoke about supporting 300 staff and 400 public access computers via Groovix, a customized Linux distribution. Since the numerous computers serve the public without needing sign-up sheets, “patrons are able to do what they want,” said Salazar.
Conference sponsors included Talis, LibLime, OCLC, Logical Choice Technologies, and Oregon State University, Corvallis, which awarded scholarships to Nicole Engard, Jenkins Law Library, Philadelphia (a 2007 LJ Mover & Shaker), and Joshua Gomez, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Next year's code4lib will be held in Portland, OR.
