Free Programming Resources
Free Programming Resources is a directory of links to free programmer resources including free programming tutorials, free online programming books, free compilers, free programming tools, free source code, programming libraries, game programming resources, graphics resources and security tools.
Source: http://www.freeprogrammingresources.com/
Regards,
Muniraju T
Dept. of LIS
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Monday, February 19, 2007
Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship - Winter 2007 & Google opens Gmail to all
Dear All,
Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship - Number 49, Winter 2007 - is now available at http://www.istl.org/07-winter/index.html
And
Google on Wednesday said its Gmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account. Previously the service, which provides users with 2.8GB of e-mail storage space, has been by invitation only.
Please visit http://news.com.com/Google+opens+Gmail+to+all/2100-1038_3-6157101.html
Regards,
Muniraju T
Dept.of LIS
BUB-056
Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship - Number 49, Winter 2007 - is now available at http://www.istl.org/07-winter/index.html
And
Google on Wednesday said its Gmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account. Previously the service, which provides users with 2.8GB of e-mail storage space, has been by invitation only.
Please visit http://news.com.com/Google+opens+Gmail+to+all/2100-1038_3-6157101.html
Regards,
Muniraju T
Dept.of LIS
BUB-056
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Librarians stake their future on open source
Dear All
Librarians stake their future on open source
A group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service has developed an open source, enterprise-class library management system that may revolutionize the way large-scale libraries are run.
The system, Evergreen, whose 1.0 release came in November, is an Integrated Library System (ILS): the software that manages, catalogs, and tracks the circulation of library holdings. It's written in C, JavaScript and Perl, is GPLed, runs on Linux with Apache, uses a PostgreSQL database, Jabber for messaging and XUL as client-side software. The system allows easy clustering and is based entirely on open protocols.
Evergreen powers the GPLS' network of libraries, PINES (Public Information Network for Electronic Services), consisting of 44 different public library systems in 123 counties covering almost the entire state of Georgia -- 252 member libraries in all. The system has 8.8 million items in its index and 1.6 million active cardholders. In fiscal year 2006, there were almost half a million loans made between its libraries.
Librarian Brad LaJeunesse, PINES System Administrator with GPLS in Atlanta says that his "main motivator" for Evergreen was that the world of library software is "pretty dismal, and the products are awful. Trying to run a state-wide library system on duct tape and bailing wire is pretty difficult."
It's an open secret that ILS systems today are a frustrating mess for smart librarians (and patrons). Asked what problems he had with prior systems, LaJeunesse is quick to tally off a list: "Scalability. The ability to treat organization units as individual entities. Lack of granular permissions. Poor customer service. Lots more," he says.
And yet, the ILS is the backbone of the modern library -- if it's down, the library's down. "It's a mission-critical piece of software," LaJeunesse says.
The PINES network first went live in December of 1999 using the proprietary Sirsi Unicorn ILS, says PINES Program Director Julie Walker.
She says that a few years ago, when PINES decided to develop its own open source ILS to replace Unicorn, it had to hire two new developers, increasing their administrators from two to four. But this team doesn't just support the system -- they're creating it.
"I think that what they've done is nothing short of remarkable in the library world, and really, in any world," says Walker. "I'm really, really pleased with what they've been able to pull off."
The first alpha demo of Evergreen happened early in 2005, and was followed by a beta in July 2005; then came a barrage of "little mini releases," where users could give input on development as it was happening, says Walker. "We really kept our libraries involved every step of the way, and every time we had something new for them to look at we'd put it out there and they'd comment on it."
Finally, in September of this year, Evergreen went live on all 252 libraries in the system. Walker says that when the libraries closed at six o'clock on Friday evening, they turned off the old system and spent the weekend migrating; by the Tuesday after Labor Day, all of their systems throughout the state of Georgia were on Evergreen. There were a few "bumpy moments" on Tuesday because they didn't expect nearly as much traffic to the site as what hit them -- but otherwise, it was smooth sailing.
"It has really been the easiest conversion I've ever been through in my 25 years of working in libraries," Walker says.
One of the happiest consequences of having development done in-house is the response Walker now gets to feature requests.
"I think that's the biggest frustration we hear from all of our library colleagues," Walker says. In the past, if you requested a change, she says, "you went into an 'enhancements queue,' and the member base voted on it, and it took a really long time -- if ever. There aren't very many consortiums of 252 public libraries, so what we wanted a lot of times wasn't what the rest of the customers wanted, so it got real frustrating waiting for things to happen."
Now, she says, sometimes things happen overnight -- literally. "We suggest something one day, and the guys fix it that night, and the next day we see it!"
In fact, the catalog has many features and innovations that are lacking in non-free systems. It does on-the-fly spellcheck and gives search suggestions and adds additional content, such as book covers, reviews, and excerpts. The Shelf Browser shows items ordered along a "virtual" shelf built out of the holdings of the entire system. Patrons can create "bookbags," which are lists that contain a selected collection of annotated titles. Bookbags can be kept private or shared as a regular Web page or as Atom or RSS feeds.
"If you choose the 'share' option, then you've created a URL of that list, and you could then email that URL or post it on your MySpace page," Walker says. "And then when somebody clicks on it, it opens up and you've got your live links right into the catalog -- so then your friends can place holds on those books, too. It's got a lot of really great applications for libraries if they want to do a book list for a book club and put it up on the library Web site, and the people can just click on it and go directly in."
Over the next year or so GPLS plans to write an acquisitions module that will be used for the selection and purchasing of library materials, and plans more social networking applications along the lines of tagging and collaboration between patrons -- what Walker says are "exciting things that we think would be fun to add to our catalog."
According to Walker, the financial savings from Evergreen come on a number of levels.
"Our Sirsi system ran on a great big Sun server that was quite expensive. We poured a lot of money into that over the years to continue to upgrade it, plus the housing of it was very expensive. [Evergreen] runs on a Linux cluster, which is a lot less expensive. Also, we're not paying licensing fees anymore. When you're talking 252 libraries, which is what we are today, that's the great big savings."
According to a study that PINES conducted in 2002, Walker says that if all of their libraries would have to buy a new system, it would cost more than $15 million dollars, plus about $5 million dollars a year for maintenance. They run PINES for a lean $1.6 million a year.
Librarians are not all strangers to open source, nor is this even the first open source ILS; the Koha ILS has been around for years. But Koha "wasn't built with the scalability or deep organizational hierarchy that PINES requires," says LaJeunesse. "It would work fine for a 10-branch library system, but not for a statewide system."
Tina Burger, a vice president at LibLime, a company that helps libraries adopt open source software, says that her company is now providing Evergreen support along with the support they already provide for Koha. "Evergreen is ideal for large-scale deployment in very large systems (hundreds of libraries, tens of millions of records)," she says.
LaJeunesse says that they are presently in discussions with other institutions about development partnerships; and while GPLS is the only institution currently using Evergreen as their production system, he suggests that will change very soon: "Ask again in a month," he says with a smile.
Walker confirms that the inquiries have been coming in from both academic and public libraries. "We've been fielding a lot of calls and we've been making a few presentations at some conferences, so I think people are really interested in having an alternative to vendor-based systems."
By designing its own Linux-based system, PINES took its future in its hands -- and now it's happier for the risk.
"Libraries are not the biggest risk-takers in the world," says Walker.
"We talked about that a lot when we were making the decision to go in this direction, and finally a couple of us looked at each other and said, 'You know, we're librarians -- how often do we get a chance to really take a big risk and see what we can do?'" she laughs. "And we're really glad that we did."
Source : http://enterprise.linux.com/
Librarians stake their future on open source
A group of librarians at the Georgia Public Library Service has developed an open source, enterprise-class library management system that may revolutionize the way large-scale libraries are run.
The system, Evergreen, whose 1.0 release came in November, is an Integrated Library System (ILS): the software that manages, catalogs, and tracks the circulation of library holdings. It's written in C, JavaScript and Perl, is GPLed, runs on Linux with Apache, uses a PostgreSQL database, Jabber for messaging and XUL as client-side software. The system allows easy clustering and is based entirely on open protocols.
Evergreen powers the GPLS' network of libraries, PINES (Public Information Network for Electronic Services), consisting of 44 different public library systems in 123 counties covering almost the entire state of Georgia -- 252 member libraries in all. The system has 8.8 million items in its index and 1.6 million active cardholders. In fiscal year 2006, there were almost half a million loans made between its libraries.
Librarian Brad LaJeunesse, PINES System Administrator with GPLS in Atlanta says that his "main motivator" for Evergreen was that the world of library software is "pretty dismal, and the products are awful. Trying to run a state-wide library system on duct tape and bailing wire is pretty difficult."
It's an open secret that ILS systems today are a frustrating mess for smart librarians (and patrons). Asked what problems he had with prior systems, LaJeunesse is quick to tally off a list: "Scalability. The ability to treat organization units as individual entities. Lack of granular permissions. Poor customer service. Lots more," he says.
And yet, the ILS is the backbone of the modern library -- if it's down, the library's down. "It's a mission-critical piece of software," LaJeunesse says.
The PINES network first went live in December of 1999 using the proprietary Sirsi Unicorn ILS, says PINES Program Director Julie Walker.
She says that a few years ago, when PINES decided to develop its own open source ILS to replace Unicorn, it had to hire two new developers, increasing their administrators from two to four. But this team doesn't just support the system -- they're creating it.
"I think that what they've done is nothing short of remarkable in the library world, and really, in any world," says Walker. "I'm really, really pleased with what they've been able to pull off."
The first alpha demo of Evergreen happened early in 2005, and was followed by a beta in July 2005; then came a barrage of "little mini releases," where users could give input on development as it was happening, says Walker. "We really kept our libraries involved every step of the way, and every time we had something new for them to look at we'd put it out there and they'd comment on it."
Finally, in September of this year, Evergreen went live on all 252 libraries in the system. Walker says that when the libraries closed at six o'clock on Friday evening, they turned off the old system and spent the weekend migrating; by the Tuesday after Labor Day, all of their systems throughout the state of Georgia were on Evergreen. There were a few "bumpy moments" on Tuesday because they didn't expect nearly as much traffic to the site as what hit them -- but otherwise, it was smooth sailing.
"It has really been the easiest conversion I've ever been through in my 25 years of working in libraries," Walker says.
One of the happiest consequences of having development done in-house is the response Walker now gets to feature requests.
"I think that's the biggest frustration we hear from all of our library colleagues," Walker says. In the past, if you requested a change, she says, "you went into an 'enhancements queue,' and the member base voted on it, and it took a really long time -- if ever. There aren't very many consortiums of 252 public libraries, so what we wanted a lot of times wasn't what the rest of the customers wanted, so it got real frustrating waiting for things to happen."
Now, she says, sometimes things happen overnight -- literally. "We suggest something one day, and the guys fix it that night, and the next day we see it!"
In fact, the catalog has many features and innovations that are lacking in non-free systems. It does on-the-fly spellcheck and gives search suggestions and adds additional content, such as book covers, reviews, and excerpts. The Shelf Browser shows items ordered along a "virtual" shelf built out of the holdings of the entire system. Patrons can create "bookbags," which are lists that contain a selected collection of annotated titles. Bookbags can be kept private or shared as a regular Web page or as Atom or RSS feeds.
"If you choose the 'share' option, then you've created a URL of that list, and you could then email that URL or post it on your MySpace page," Walker says. "And then when somebody clicks on it, it opens up and you've got your live links right into the catalog -- so then your friends can place holds on those books, too. It's got a lot of really great applications for libraries if they want to do a book list for a book club and put it up on the library Web site, and the people can just click on it and go directly in."
Over the next year or so GPLS plans to write an acquisitions module that will be used for the selection and purchasing of library materials, and plans more social networking applications along the lines of tagging and collaboration between patrons -- what Walker says are "exciting things that we think would be fun to add to our catalog."
According to Walker, the financial savings from Evergreen come on a number of levels.
"Our Sirsi system ran on a great big Sun server that was quite expensive. We poured a lot of money into that over the years to continue to upgrade it, plus the housing of it was very expensive. [Evergreen] runs on a Linux cluster, which is a lot less expensive. Also, we're not paying licensing fees anymore. When you're talking 252 libraries, which is what we are today, that's the great big savings."
According to a study that PINES conducted in 2002, Walker says that if all of their libraries would have to buy a new system, it would cost more than $15 million dollars, plus about $5 million dollars a year for maintenance. They run PINES for a lean $1.6 million a year.
Librarians are not all strangers to open source, nor is this even the first open source ILS; the Koha ILS has been around for years. But Koha "wasn't built with the scalability or deep organizational hierarchy that PINES requires," says LaJeunesse. "It would work fine for a 10-branch library system, but not for a statewide system."
Tina Burger, a vice president at LibLime, a company that helps libraries adopt open source software, says that her company is now providing Evergreen support along with the support they already provide for Koha. "Evergreen is ideal for large-scale deployment in very large systems (hundreds of libraries, tens of millions of records)," she says.
LaJeunesse says that they are presently in discussions with other institutions about development partnerships; and while GPLS is the only institution currently using Evergreen as their production system, he suggests that will change very soon: "Ask again in a month," he says with a smile.
Walker confirms that the inquiries have been coming in from both academic and public libraries. "We've been fielding a lot of calls and we've been making a few presentations at some conferences, so I think people are really interested in having an alternative to vendor-based systems."
By designing its own Linux-based system, PINES took its future in its hands -- and now it's happier for the risk.
"Libraries are not the biggest risk-takers in the world," says Walker.
"We talked about that a lot when we were making the decision to go in this direction, and finally a couple of us looked at each other and said, 'You know, we're librarians -- how often do we get a chance to really take a big risk and see what we can do?'" she laughs. "And we're really glad that we did."
Source : http://enterprise.linux.com/
Monday, January 8, 2007
Searching the net
Searching the net is an essential component of one’s online life and a variety
oftools meant for it are in place.The distinct feature of the search tools arena
is the incessant inflow of new tools. Before settling down with a tool, one
finds another one
appearing on the scene. Even savvy netizens find it challenging to keep up
with the
This edition of NetSpeak provides a brief description of the latest products
in this genre.SearchMash .Anyone dealing with websearch products has to make
sure that any new offerings from Google are explored. One will never be
disappointed.Google has recently launched
(http://www.searchmash.com/about/privacy.html) a test search service called
SearchMash(http://www.searchmash.com/).
Alongside the usual searchoutput (results are similar to those of Google, but
each is numbered), the service provides options to get searchoutput from blog,
image and video sites as well.
An advantage of Search- Mash is the ‘More Results’option available at the
bottom of the output page forshowing the next set of results
in the same page.Another notable feature is ‘Hide Details,’ which lets you
hide the details displayed along with each web page –thus helping you to view
more results per page. Google Notebook search Google Notebook helps us easily
clip web content, add notes or comments and store\it online. Also, one can make
her notebook public and share the contents with others.
Now, Google has started a search service for finding information
available on publicnotebooks.With Google Notebook search service
(http://www.google.com/notebook/search), you may find lots of valuable
information.However, this search service has generated some controversy as many
people store private information on notebooks and share it without realising the
implications.Decipho (http://decipho.com/) is another search service explored by
this author.Besides the normal web search, this service has additional features
contributed byits users.
When you invoke a search,you can specify whether it is for shopping or
research or both. Another feature is the subject-specific clustering of the
results. For instance, if you start a search on statistics,the service presents
you categories such as ‘Statistics
online,’ ‘Glossary of statistics,’ ‘Stats’ and ‘Math Statistics.’
The search engine Hakia(http://www.hakia.com/),scheduled to activate its full
operation sometime in 2007, seems to be a promising search tool. The beta
version is available for testing its potential.One distinction of this service
relates to question/answer
facility. By framing good questions, you could obtain appropriate answers.
In this regard, you can use the service along with other question/answer
services such as Brainboost. Also, for certainqueries, Hakia
providescategorised results.
CometQuery (http://www.cometquery.com/) is yet another addition to the search
tool landscape.With each of the links in the output, the service displays its
screenshot as well.Open source journals As mentioned in the past,lots of open
access repositories on a range of subjects that include Science,
Medicine,Engineering and Business are in place.An open access repository permits
anyone to access and use its content for free. Open- DOAR, the Directory of Open
Access Repositories-(http://www.opendoar.org/index.html) is a good place to
locate several such open content sources.To help you access the content stored
on various repositories available on its list, OpenDOAR has recently assembled a
search service using Google’s new search tool,
Google CSE.For more details: http://www.opendoar.org/search.php.
oftools meant for it are in place.The distinct feature of the search tools arena
is the incessant inflow of new tools. Before settling down with a tool, one
finds another one
appearing on the scene. Even savvy netizens find it challenging to keep up
with the
This edition of NetSpeak provides a brief description of the latest products
in this genre.SearchMash .Anyone dealing with websearch products has to make
sure that any new offerings from Google are explored. One will never be
disappointed.Google has recently launched
(http://www.searchmash.com/about/privacy.html) a test search service called
SearchMash(http://www.searchmash.com/).
Alongside the usual searchoutput (results are similar to those of Google, but
each is numbered), the service provides options to get searchoutput from blog,
image and video sites as well.
An advantage of Search- Mash is the ‘More Results’option available at the
bottom of the output page forshowing the next set of results
in the same page.Another notable feature is ‘Hide Details,’ which lets you
hide the details displayed along with each web page –thus helping you to view
more results per page. Google Notebook search Google Notebook helps us easily
clip web content, add notes or comments and store\it online. Also, one can make
her notebook public and share the contents with others.
Now, Google has started a search service for finding information
available on publicnotebooks.With Google Notebook search service
(http://www.google.com/notebook/search), you may find lots of valuable
information.However, this search service has generated some controversy as many
people store private information on notebooks and share it without realising the
implications.Decipho (http://decipho.com/) is another search service explored by
this author.Besides the normal web search, this service has additional features
contributed byits users.
When you invoke a search,you can specify whether it is for shopping or
research or both. Another feature is the subject-specific clustering of the
results. For instance, if you start a search on statistics,the service presents
you categories such as ‘Statistics
online,’ ‘Glossary of statistics,’ ‘Stats’ and ‘Math Statistics.’
The search engine Hakia(http://www.hakia.com/),scheduled to activate its full
operation sometime in 2007, seems to be a promising search tool. The beta
version is available for testing its potential.One distinction of this service
relates to question/answer
facility. By framing good questions, you could obtain appropriate answers.
In this regard, you can use the service along with other question/answer
services such as Brainboost. Also, for certainqueries, Hakia
providescategorised results.
CometQuery (http://www.cometquery.com/) is yet another addition to the search
tool landscape.With each of the links in the output, the service displays its
screenshot as well.Open source journals As mentioned in the past,lots of open
access repositories on a range of subjects that include Science,
Medicine,Engineering and Business are in place.An open access repository permits
anyone to access and use its content for free. Open- DOAR, the Directory of Open
Access Repositories-(http://www.opendoar.org/index.html) is a good place to
locate several such open content sources.To help you access the content stored
on various repositories available on its list, OpenDOAR has recently assembled a
search service using Google’s new search tool,
Google CSE.For more details: http://www.opendoar.org/search.php.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Technology Electronic Reviews (TER) By LITA
Technology Electronic Reviews (TER) is an irregular electronic
serial publication of the Library and Information Technology
Association, a division of the American Library Association
TER is to provide reviews of and pointers to a variety of print and
electronic resources about information technology. Resources include
books, articles, serials, discussion lists, training materials,
bibliographies, and other items of interest to librarians and
information technology professionals. The topics covered may
include, but are not limited to, networking technologies and
standards; hardware and software; operating systems; databases;
specific programming languages; management tools and utilities;
technical project management; training and personnel issues; library
perspectives; and research and development.
http://www.ala. org/ala/lita/ litapublications /ter/tertechnolo gy.htm
serial publication of the Library and Information Technology
Association, a division of the American Library Association
TER is to provide reviews of and pointers to a variety of print and
electronic resources about information technology. Resources include
books, articles, serials, discussion lists, training materials,
bibliographies, and other items of interest to librarians and
information technology professionals. The topics covered may
include, but are not limited to, networking technologies and
standards; hardware and software; operating systems; databases;
specific programming languages; management tools and utilities;
technical project management; training and personnel issues; library
perspectives; and research and development.
http://www.ala. org/ala/lita/ litapublications /ter/tertechnolo gy.htm
British Library new home page
Dear all,
From The British Library: "We hope you will try our new home page. It incorporates a much improved search of our web resources. It is the result of extensive user research and technical development over the last year and will replace our current home page in coming weeks. We were aware that some users had been finding it difficult to locate the British Library web content that best met their needs. Using the new search box means that users can see results from our four most important web resources together on the same page".
Friday, January 5, 2007
E-LIS: Open Archive for Librarianship
Dear all,
E-LIS (http://eprints.rclis.org/) is an open access archive for scientific or technical documents, published or unpublished, on Librarianship, Information Science and Technology, and related areas. E-LIS relies on the voluntary work of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds and is non-commercial. It is not a funded project of an organization. It is community-owned and community-driven. We serve LIS researchers by facilitating their self-archiving, ensuring the long-term preservation of their documents and by providing word-wide easy access to their papers.
As on today it has around 4870 Full text documents, and it has only around 335 from Indian LIS professionals. We request you to kindly archive your publications on E-LIS and give more visibility to LIS research in India. Visit http://eprints.rclis.org/ for more details.
Removal of Price and Permission barriers are the promises of Open Access, which makes Librarians as the advocates and Practitioners of OA Movement. As advocates of Open Access, we need to deposit our own works E-LIS.
Please deposit your works and publications at E-LIS, the popular international Archive for LIS field. If you have any technical problems, E-LIS Editors will help you. Visit http://eprints.rclis.org/ for more details.
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