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Electronic Information for Libraries
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PHP and MySQL workshop, Bamako, Mali - report(Guest blog post from Abdrahamane Anne of the Library of the Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Dentistry, University of Bamako, Mali. This is the first of the workshops to take place in the eIFL-FOSS Skills and Tools Workshops initiative.)
Behind the Scenes
From 18 May to 22 May 2009, COMBI, the Malian Library Consortium, organized its first capacity building workshop on FOSS for librarians. ...
The first Evergreen International Conference, 2009 Athens (USA) – reportThe first Evergreen International Conference was held in Athens (USA) on May 20-22, 2009. I submitted a presentation “Evergreen in Armenia” and after acceptance of the paper by the Conference Organizing Committee, eIFL sponsored my trip and Conference participation.More than 150 participants (most from USA and Canada) were attending this meeting, and according to overall ...
IST-AFRICA Conference 2009 - report(Guest blog post from Ronald Munatsi, Coordinator, College & Research Librairies Consortium (CARLC), and Principal Librarian, Zimbabwe Parliament Library.)
FOSS – Ultimate solution for libraries in Africa
I had the privilege of attending this year's IST-Africa Conference in Kampala, Uganda from 4-8 May 2009 courtesy of eIFL.net. Supported by the European Commission under the ...
Evergreen Training for Ilia Chavchavadze State University Library StaffThe Fundamental Scientific Library (FSL) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Armenia is actively involved in implementing the Evergreen FOSS ILS in the NAS institution libraries and in advocating the system amongst the librarians from the developing countries. During April 6-7 Ilia Chavchavadze State University (Tbilsi, Georgia) library director Natia Gabrichidze and two IT specialists ...
Ada Lovelace Day - Bess SadlerThe purpose of Ada Lovelace Day - 24 March 2009 - is to draw attention to women excelling in technology. To do that thousands of people today are blogging about a woman in technology whom they admire. I have a very long list of women working in technology that I admire, but today, on this first Ada Lovelace Day, I have chosen to write about Bess Sadler, Chief Architect for the Online Library ...
LTSP in Bamako, MaliRecently I was in Bamako, Mali, visiting the ever impressive Abdrahamane Anne at the Library of the Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Dentistry, University of Bamako. The purpose of my visit was to gather information for a case study on the Koha ILS pilot work that Anne, as he is known, is leading there. I spent two full days with Anne as he walked me through his methodology for exporting ...
Webinars - the new virtual classroom?Yesterday I participated in my very first webinar. Webinars are a type of web conference where one person (possibly with a small team of helpers) is presenting on a topic to a large but self-selecting group (registration is usually involved in order to participate in a webinar). The presenter usually is running a slideshow of some kind with verbal commentary. The participants may patiently and ...
Meeting the FOSS challenge in KathmanduRecently I spent a couple days in Kathmandu, Nepal, visiting the team of library IT professionals at Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (MPP) which is conducting one of the pilots for the eIFL-FOSS ILS project. Dibyendra Hyoju is the technical lead on this Evergreen pilot with Amar Gurung, his Director as well as eIFL-FOSS country coordinator, providing careful oversight. A case study of this pilot will ...
The Square of EngagementRecently I was thinking about institutional engagement with free and open source software (FOSS). I had been asked to open a day-long workshop on the relevance of a FOSS integrated library system (ILS) for academic libraries. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that libraries have a vast array of FOSS they are busy deploying. Everything from Apache web servers, to Drupal content ...
Documentation: not just another pretty faceI have always thought that documentation was a vital component of any FOSS project. But recently the value of documentation was illuminated for me in a new way. This has me rethinking the basis of the importance of documentation for a FOSS project at nearly any stage of development.Let me describe the case that prompts this reflection. A long-term (2 to 3 year) user of an enterprise software ...
Free Software and Open Source Symposium 2008, Toronto - reportI was struck by a number of thoughts during the recent FSOSS 2008 event at Seneca College in Toronto. First, one cannot attend an event like this without coming away feeling as though FOSS is totally mainstream these days. The four parallel sets of presentations running over the two days of FSOSS 2008 showed FOSS in many lights. As well as a number of talks about integrated development ...
Greenstone training workshop, Nairobi, Kenya, 22-26 September 2008 - report(Guest blog post from Amos Kujenga, National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Library, Zimbabwe)The week before last, Misheck Nyaluso and I were at the University of Nairobi where we conducted a 5-day Greenstone Workshop (from Monday 22 - Friday 26 September). The event was sponsored by UNESCO (Nairobi Cluster Office), organised by the Kenya Information Preservation Society (KIPS), and ...
ACCESS2008: Library Technology Conference, 2-4 October 2008 - reportMaybe it's just me but sometimes I need to recharge my batteries. Here is my solution: spend a couple of days with energized library technologists, FOSS developers, and systems librarians. Well, I did say that maybe it's just me. Fortunately my batteries got a full charge this week at Access2008, Canada's première library technology conference, which was being hosted just down the road from me ...
Software Freedom Day - 20 September 2008Is your library "connected"? I mean connected to FOSS community outside your doors? Do you know who is working with FOSS in your local community? Do you have regular contact with them, perhaps through your friendly local Linux User Group (LUG)? And if not, how do you get your library involved with your local FOSS community? I want to combine two really useful suggestions that came my ...
Community Liaison - the intersection of FOSS users, developers, and businessesThe recent appointment of K.G. Schneider - prolific blogger on librianship, writing and everything else, since 2003 - as Community Librarian for Equinox marks a significant milestone. It is significant both for the FOSS development community behind the Evergreen integrated library system (ILS), and for the company that employs the majority of the Evergreen developers and provides installation and ...
The Code4Lib Journal - essential readingAs readers of this blog will know, I am not a professional librarian, and I am also not, by training, a programmer. Fortunately for me, around the time I started working closely with librarians and (even more scary?) software developers for libraries The Code4Lib Journal was launched. Its mission is to foster community and share information among those interested in the intersection of libraries, ...
NewGenLib - a new FOSS ILS ready for useNewGenLib, which stands for New Generation Library, is an integrated library system (ILS) that some of you, especially those in India, Syria, Sudan, or Cambodia, will already know. It is the product of a 4-year collaboration between the Kesavan Institute of Information and Knowledge Management (KIIKM) and Verus Solutions Pvt. Limited (VSPL), both based in Hyderabad, India. Toward the end of 2007 ...
IRC: information on tapInternet relay chat (IRC) is a familiar communication tool in FOSS development and user communities. It can be vibrant, fast-paced, friendly, exceedingly geeky, and ideal for getting a quick response to a hard question you just haven't been able to sort. If you have not tried it previously then now is as good a time as any. You could start by exploring the IRC channels, or chat rooms, that ...
OLA Super Conference: the profession of librarianshipThis past Thursday and Friday I attended the Ontario Library Association (OLA) Super Conference in Toronto, Canada. It is a huge annual event in the professional librarianship calendar in Ontario (and beyond) with more than 1000 delegates and up to 29 parallel sessions running at any one time. It's all here and it is all focussed on the professional development of librarians.Since I'm still very ...
OLPC: open source, open access, open library - University of WindsorRecently I had the good fortune to be invited along for a special evening celebrating, publicising, and enthusing about the One Laptop Per Child project organized by Mita Williams of The Leddy Library at the University of Windsor. I had been asked to speak on the significance of free software and to inform those assembled about the eIFL-FOSS program. A perfect opportunity for me to enthuse ...
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Program management The eIFL-FOSS program manager is Randy Metcalfe. The eIFL-FOSS ILS project coordinator is Tigran Zargaryan. The Southern African Greenstone Support Network project coordinator is Repke de Vries, and its regional coordinator is Amos Kujenga. If you have questions about eIFL-FOSS or one of its projects, please feel free to contact us using the following email addresses: |
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