WordPress 2.6 open for business

Hi — I just upgraded my WordPress install and along with it, removed some old crusty plugins that I don’t think I was using anymore. If you come across something that is broken or working worse than it was this morning, please drop me a line or a comment and let me know. Thank you.

Open Source Software in Libraries

Casey Bisson has written a Library Technology Reports issue on Open Source Software in Libraries with a chapter by yours truly. I got to install and run Mac and Windows versions of the more popular desktop open source applications and take screenshots and make recommendations. Of course it’s not hard to recommend something like Firefox with all its sexy add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts, but you might not know that VLC is a pretty good media player, or that for advanced users Gimp can do a lot of what Photoshop does for no cost. Now if we can just get our style guides properly updated to not suggest hyphenating it all the time, we’ll be golden.

open source software in libraries, a query

I’m putting together a little piece about open source software, sort of showcasing how it is or can be used in libraries. Some of the tools, like Firefox or Open Office, are somewhat well known while others like VLC or Paint.net are much less familiar. If your library is using an open source tool and liking it, would you mind putting a note in the comments or dropping me an email over the next week or so letting me know what you use and why you like it? Thank you.

Here are a few little things I’ve been reading on the subject this week.

– Dan Chudnov’s Talk slides: “FLOSS for Libraries: For Administrators”
– LifeHackers Geek to Live: Top 10 open source Windows apps
– Eric Goldhagen’s Open Source for Librarians powerpoint presentation.

Consumer/librarian reviews

My favorite thing about blogs beyond the personal interactions that they afford is reading what people think about more products than I can usefully evaluate on my own. Two reviews that came through my reader lately have been true gems:

1. Mary “LibraryLaw” Minow discusses LibraryElf: My library elf – the joy and the horror
2. Sarah “Librarian in Black” Houghton tries a beta of QuestionPoint’s Flash interface: New QuestionPoint Flash Interface: LiB’s Review

Meredith “Information Wants to be Free” Farkas also does a lot of good no-nonsense reviews.