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FOSS tools

FOSS tools that may be useful for current operation.

Any EIFL Member libraries who are currently using any of these tools, please send brief details to simon.ball [@] eifl.net so we can include your installation in the 'EIFL users' section for that software.

ABCD | Apache Solr | Blacklight | CUFTS | DSpace | Disability Tools | Drupal | EPrints | Eduroam | Evergreen | Fedora | Frontline SMS | GODOT | Greenstone | Invenio | Islandora | J-ISIS | Koha | NewGenLib | OpenBiblio | Open Harvester Systems | Open Journal Systems | Open Monograph Press | reSearcher | Shibboleth | SimpleSAMLphp | SubjectsPlus | VuFind | WordPress | Xerte Online Toolkits | Zotero

 

ABCD (Automatización de Bibliotecas y Centros de Documentación)

Summary: ABCD is web-based integrated library management software that covers the main library functions, with web centrality and FOSS development and maintenance. It originated from the ISIS suite. Catalogues books and serials independently of format eg MARC, LILACS, AGRIS etc. OPAC compatible, CDS/ISIS compatible, Windows / Linux, supports MARC21, Dublin Core, METS, Z39.50. (For an explanation of the difference between ABCD and J-ISIS, see the entry for J-ISIS).

 

Apache Solr

Summary: Apache Solr is an enterprise search platform written in Java. It facilitates full text search, faceted search, dynamic clustering, database integration and rich document handling. Faceted search in particular is becoming a popular methodology for content rich websites, catalogues and repositories, including digital libraries. It is a resource discovery approach which has the propensity to enhance user experience. The Apache Solr and Apache Lucene projects were merged in 2010, so you may see references to Lucene/Solr or Solr/Lucene. 

 

Blacklight

Summary: Blacklight is a Ruby-on-Rails based discovery interface especially optimized for heterogeneous collections. It can be used as an OPAC, as a front end for a digital repository, or as a single-search interface to aggregate digital content that would otherwise be siloed, even across different institutions. Blacklight is based on Apache Solr and is configured to work out of the box with MARC records.

 

CUFTS

Summary: CUFTS provides basic electronic resource management services, allowing your library to centralize all of the details about your electronic collections, including licensing terms, renewal dates, contacts, and more. CUFTS ERM also features a renewal notification system, reminding you of approaching deadlines and an A-Z list of your electronic resources. CUFTS is a part of the reSearcher suite of tools including GODOT and dbWiz and will operate on Linux, Solaris and BSD. 

        1. Details of an EIFL FOSS webinar by Kevin Stranack of Simon Fraser University in Canada, 
        2. Details of an EIFL FOSS webinar (in Russian) by Andrew Sokolov of St. Petersburg State University, Russia, and 
        3. Screencast tutorials (in English) also by Andrew Sokolov.

DSpace

Summary: DSpace is an open source software package that provides the tools for management of digital assets, and is commonly used as the basis for institutional repositories. DSpace preserves and enables easy and open access to all types of digital content including text, images, moving images, mpegs and data sets. Dspace and Fedora are now both advanced by the same organisation: DuraSpace. Operates on Windows, OSX or Linux.   

 

Disability Tools

Summary: There are a many FOSS tools which can be used to support library users with disabilities. These include tools to aid viewing of the screen (such as magnification, colour change), tools to aid usability (e.g. making the cursor more visible), tools to aid reading (e.g. text-to-speech tools in many languages), information presentation tools (e.g. mind mapping software) and more. A great place to begin is the AccessApps package, a suite of over 60 open source and freeware Windows applications which run from a USB stick. AccessApps provides a range of solutions to support writing, reading and planning as well as specific disabilities. 

 Drupal

Summary: Drupal is a FOSS content management system and framework, written in PHP. It is used as the back-end for many websites around the world, including many libraries, and the main EIFL website. The standard release (Drupal core) contains features such as user account management,  menu management, RSS feeds, page layout customisation and system administration. Other modules and versions are avilable to perform additional functions. It is cross-platform.

EPrints

Summary: EPrints Repository Software is a tool designed specifically to facilitate the building of high quality, OAI-compliant repositories, which can contain research literature, scientific data, theses, images, reports – essentially any content. Available for Linux (Debian/Ubuntu and Redhat/Fedora) and for Windows. 

Eduroam

Summary: Eduroam (education roaming) is a secure wireless server, developed for the international research and education community to support the mobility needs of staff, students and researchers. The initiative allows people from participating institutions to obtain Internet connectivity through wireless (wifi), on their home campus, around town and abroad. In fact thousands of locations in over 58 countries offer this service.

 

Evergreen

Summary: Evergreen is an open source Integrated Library System (ILS). Evergreen includes circulation and cataloguing features, OPAC, SIP2.0 support for interaction with management software and search/retrieval through Z39.50. Evergreen also features the Open Scalable Request Framework (OpenSRF, pronounced 'open surf'), that allows developers to create applications for Evergreen with a minimum of knowledge of its structure. Operates on Debian or Ubuntu Linux servers.

Fedora

Summary: Fedora (or Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture) is a modular architecture built on the principle that interoperability and extensibility is best achieved by the integration of data, interfaces, and mechanisms (i.e., executable programs) as clearly defined modules. Fedora is a digital asset management (DAM) architecture, upon which many types of digital library, institutional repositories, digital archives, and digital libraries systems might be built. Fedora is the underlying architecture for a digital repository, and is not a complete management, indexing, discovery, and delivery application. Java-based so potentially applicable to any platform.  

Frontline SMS

Summary: Frontline SMS is a FOSS tool that helps turn a laptop and mobile phone into a communications hub. Once installed, the program enables users to send and receive text messages with groups of people through mobile phones. What you communicate is up to you, making FrontlineSMS useful in many different ways. You can: Create and manage all of your SMS-related contact groups; View incoming and outgoing message history; Collect data via SMS, and export data for easy analysis; Run your own SMS information service using auto-replies. There are versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

GODOT

Summary: GODOT provides direct links to fulltext collections, using the CUFTS knowledge base, and reveals holdings in your catalogue or in other locations via a link embedded in your citation databases or other resources. GODOT also works closely with Interlibrary Loan systems (including the open source OpenILL) and Integrated Library Systems to provide direct or mediated interlibrary loan requests by your users. GODOT is part of the reSearcher suite of tool and operates on Linux, Solaris, BSD. 

Greenstone (also known as GSDL – Greenstone Digital Library) 

Summary: Greenstone is a suite of software tools for building and distributing digital library collections on the Internet or CD-ROM. Greenstone may be used to create large, searchable collections of digital documents. In addition to command line tools for digital collection building, Greenstone has a graphical Greenstone Librarians Interface (GLI) used to build collections and assign metadata. Through user selected plugins, Greenstone can import digital documents in formats including text, html, jpg, tiff, MP3, PDF, video, and Word, among others. The text, PDF, HTML and similar documents are converted into Greenstone Archive Format (GAF) which is an XML equivalent format. Versions available for Windows, OSX and Linux. 

Invenio

Summary: Invenio is a free software suite enabling you to run your own digital library or document repository on the web. The technology offered by the software covers all aspects of digital library management from document ingestion through classification, indexing, and curation to dissemination. Invenio complies with standards such as the Open Archives Initiative metadata harvesting protocol (OAI-PMH) and uses MARC 21 as its underlying bibliographic format. The flexibility and performance of Invenio make it a comprehensive solution for management of document repositories of moderate to large sizes (several millions of records). Developed by CERN. Runs on Linux.

 
Islandora

Summary: Islandora combines the Drupal and Fedora open software applications to create a robust digital asset management system that can be fitted to meet the short and long term collaborative requirements of digital data stewardship. Additional open source applications are added to this core stack to create 'Solution Packs'. Islandora may be used to create large, searchable collections of digital assets of any type and is domain-agnostic in terms of the type of content it can steward. It has a highly modular architecture. 

J-ISIS (or Java ISIS)

Summary: CDS/ISIS software for creating, updating and searching textual databases, with restrictions removed and added Client server and Unicode functionality. Based on the NetBeans platform. According to Egbert de Smet writing in March 2010, the difference between ABCD and J-ISIS is that ABCD is "a combination of a full integrated library management software with a general-purpose ISIS-database interface (creating, editing and searching), but mainly it uses web-technology for this purpose", whilst J-ISIS is "a general purpose interface for ISIS-database management, using client-server technology (which means the user-interface can be on a different computer from the one running the databases, but also on the same). It uses a 'rich client' (i.e. a graphical interface which has lots of features to simplify operations or allows advanced actions) but soon will also have a web-interface for the users." In addition, he says "J-ISIS uses a different database engine (Berkely DB) and indexer (Lucene), ABCD still uses 'classic' ISIS-technology (MST and XRF, but with quite extended capabilities); J-ISIS is fully UNICODE, ABCD will need to be migrated to a new ISIS-environment which is said to be 'almost ready' but since quite long; J-ISIS uses Java-programming whereas ABCD is based on PHP-programming."

Koha

Summary:  Koha is an Integrated Library System with a range of features including: MARC based cataloging, Union Catalog facility, customizable search, cataloguing module with integrated Z39.50 client, and a simple acquisitions system for the smaller library. Koha is designed to work on Linux, but will work on Windows with the installation of a series of additional modules. Beware that the web URL www.koha.org which was previously dedicated to the FOSS Koha tool has now been acquired by Liblime Koha, a branch of the software's development for which paid-for support is offered. The 'original' FOSS Koha tool homepage is the Koha-Community page shown below.

NewGenLib

Summary:  NewGenLib (NGL) is a fully functional web-based open source library management system which can be implemented in a single library as well as in a network of libraries across geographies. International library metadata standards are fully supported. NGL comprises many open source components, chief among which are Apache Tomcat, PostgreSQL Database and the well-known search engine viz., SOLR. NGL is available on the Windows and Linux platforms.

 

OpenBiblio

Summary: OpenBiblio is an integrated library management system created under a GNU General Public License (GPL). Written in PHP, it contains OPAC, circulation, cataloging, and staff administration functionality. It is designed for small libraries and is based on MARC21 cataloguing. 

Open Harvester Systems

Summary: Open Harvester Systems is a free metadata indexing system developed by the Public Knowledge Project. OHS allows you to create a searchable index of the metadata from Open Archives Initiative (OAI)-compliant archives, such as sites using Open Journal Systems (OJS) or Open Conference Systems (OCS). OHS includes the ability to harvest OAI metadata in a variety of schemas; flexible search interface that allows simple searching and advanced searching using crosswalked fields from all harvested archives; the ability to perform granular harvesting using setSpec and timestamps; and the ability to perform post-harvest and pre-indexing filtering/ normalization on metadata. The user interface is constructed using CSS and template-based HTML which allows easy customisation. 

OJS (Open Journal Systems)

Summary: Open Journal Systems (OJS) is software for the management of peer-review journals, created by the Public Knowledge Project. OJS was designed to facilitate the development of open access, peer-reviewed publishing, providing the technical infrastructure not only for the online presentation of journal articles, but also an entire editorial management workflow, including article submission, multiple rounds of peer-review, and indexing. The software itself is designed so that you can build up your installation from a core via 'plug-ins', so that installing new developments does not require a complete change of the entire code base. Some of the tools that have already been developed include facilitating indexing in Google Scholar, providing RS/Atom syndication feeds, and facilitating COUNTER statistics generation and reporting. OJS is written in PHP, and uses either a MySQL or a PostgreSQL database. It can be hosted on Windows or Unix servers.

 

Open Monograph Press

Summary: Open Monograph Press is an open source software platform from PKP for managing the editorial workflow required to process monographs, edited volumes and scholarly editions through internal and external review, editing, cataloguing, production, and publication. OMP will operate, additionally, as a press website with catalog, distribution, and sales capacities. OMP is designed to assist university presses, learned societies, and scholar-publishers interested in publishing scholarly books in print-on-demand and multiple electronic formats, whether on an open access or purchase basis. Among the many features of OMP is its ability to handle edited volumes, with different authors for each chapter; involve editors, authors, reviewers, designers, indexers, and others in book production; see submission through multiple rounds of both internal and external reviews; utilize industry standard ONIX for bookseller metadata requirements (e.g., Amazon); create document libraries for submissions, recording contracts, permissions, etc. and handle thumbnail covers in Catalog, as well as Spotlight features.

reSearcher

Summary: reSearcher is an integrated suite of open source products for locating and managing electronic information resources, designed for use by students and researchers in academic libraries. The four main modules of reSearcher are: CUFTS (Serials Management), GODOT (Link Resolving), dbWiz (Federated Searching) and Open Knowledgebase

Shibboleth

Summary: Shibboleth is an architecture and implementation for federated identity-based authentication and authorization infrastructure based on Security Assertion Markup Language  (SAML). Federated identity allows for information about users in one security domain to be provided to other organizations in a federation. This allows for cross-domain single sign-on  and removes the need for content providers to maintain user names and passwords. Identity providers (IdPs) supply user information, while service providers (SPs) consume this information and get access to secure content. Operates on Linux, OSX and Windows.

SimpleSAMLphp

Summary: SimpleSAMLphp is an award-winning application written in native PHP that provides authentication and authorisation infrastructure focused on the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). SimpleSAMLphp can be used to implement an identity Provider (IdP) to supply user information to authenticated services, a service provider (SP) to protect resources and offer an authentication interface or as a bridge to translate between popular identity protocols, such as: Shibboleth 1.3, A-Select, CAS, OpenID, WS-Federation and OAuth. Operates on Linux, Mac OSX and Microsoft Windows.

 

SubjectsPlus

Summary: SubjectsPlus is a FOSS tool (created at Ithaca College Library in the USA) that enables libraries to create and manage online research guides. Usually created by subject librarians (and therefore requiring no specialist technical skill), these guides can take many forms, with the software sufficiently flexible to allow many different ways of presenting the guides and enabling users to access them (for example, users may want to navigate by subject, by course, by database or by the type of information they seek).  

VuFind

Summary: VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed by Villanova University library. It is designed to enable all library users to search and browse through all of the library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC. 

VuFind operates with a simple Google-like interface, offering keyword searching, faceted searching, suggested resources, personal organisation (eg favourites tagging or commenting features), and offers versions in several languages.

WordPress

Summary: WordPress is one of the most popular FOSS blogging tools, that is also a Content Management System (CMS). WordPress has a rich plugin architecture (to date over 18,000 plugins have been developed), enabling each library or even consortium to use it in ways unique to their own needs. It is promoted upon its ease of use and lack of coding knowledge required. WordPress is based on PHP and MySQL but you can manage your website without any knowledge of these, as long as your server has them installed. It contains a Themes features which enables users to completely change the look and feel of a page without altering any of the content. 

Xerte Online Toolkits

Summary: WordPress is one of the most popular FOSS blogging tools, that is also a Content Management System (CMS). WordPress has a rich plugin architecture (to date over 18,000 plugins have been developed), enabling each library or even consortium to use it in ways unique to their own needs. It is promoted upon its ease of use and lack of coding knowledge required. WordPress is based on PHP and MySQL but you can manage your website without any knowledge of these, as long as your server has them installed. It contains a Themes features which enables users to completely change the look and feel of a page without altering any of the content. Xerte Online Toolkits is an easy-to-use tool which helps non-technical staff to create accessible, multimedia e-learning materials (including, for example, web guides, 'how to' guides, demonstration materials, as well as more traditional e-learning materials for teaching purposes). 

Once you have installed Xerte Online Toolkits on your server, all objects created in Xerte Online Toolkits are given a stable and unique URL, and users can access them in any browser, on any device. The software automatically builds into all objects the option for users to change the colour of the background, the size and type of text, the ability to navigate entirely by keyboard, and text-to-speech (currently only when viewed in Internet Explorer) to read aloud the object's contents. 

Zotero

Summary: Zotero is a free, open source reference management software add-on for the Firefox  browser. Zotero enables users to manage bibliographic data and to store web-page snapshots and other electronic objects. Through a separate add-on, it also allows citation in text (in Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer) and can automatically create bibliographies in various formats (such as APA and MLA). Firefox (and therefore Zotero) will operate in Linux, OSX and Windows.