Sometime ago i wrote 2 articles about OPAC “Online Public Access Catalog ” and LMS ” Library Management Systems ” , their use and capabilities for medical librarians . also i found this type of software can be very handful for developing countries as its open source , extended and easy to install and customize .
Library management systems those i found mostly as open source are web based using , web development technologies , techniques , libraries and programming languages . Most of the projects are founded and supplied by universities and libraries .
Here is a list of open source OPAC and ILMS softwares and projects .I’ll try to keep this list updated .
VuFind : http://www.vufind.org/
Personally i see it the most advanced and features rich library management system , its tricky to install and customize but not for experienced geeks . you may need to hire some developer to help you extend or customize it . DEMO http://www.vufind.org/demo/ .
Koha : http://koha.org/
Koha is a classic library management system , easy to install , customize and update . it has good community support and some are providing commercial support for it .
OpenBiblio : http://obiblio.sourceforge.net/
OpenBiblio is an easy to use, automated library system written in PHP containing OPAC, circulation, cataloging, and staff administration functionality.
emilda : http://www.emilda.org/
Emilda is a complete Integrated Library System that features amongst others an OPAC, circulation and administration functions, Z39.50 capabilities and 100% MARC compatibility. MARC compatibility is achieved using Zebra in conjunction with MySQL.
Rabi : http://linc.comp.nus.edu.sg/code/
Rabi is an open source library management system , advanced and features rich , also the developers ( WING group http://wing.comp.nus.edu.sg/portal/ ) uses different languages to build rabi infrastructure , ( java , ruby and some ruby libraries ) , which may not be the easiest OLPC system to install , but with its customizable interface it’ll be one of the most usable one for developers .
phpMyLibrary : http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmylibrary/
PHP- mySQL library management solution , its open source , easy to install and use .
Openbiblio : http://obiblio.sourceforge.net/
Open source PHP based OPAC and library management solution , Openbiblio has very useful add-ons as RSS feeds , Amazon loop-up .. which indicates it can be extended through the end-user who has coding basics and skills . There are many sites are using Openbiblio check their gallery list .
SOPAC – Drupal : http://thesocialopac.net
Is an open source Durpal CMS module to help the librarian to create an ILMS or OPAC on the top of Durpal CMS . SOPAC is running on some online libraries which i tried and seems to be very easy and has very handy useful features including rating ‘ tagging ‘ sorting ‘ and categorization . http://www.darienlibrary.org/catalog , http://www.pvld.org/catalog
Scriblio – Wordpress : http://about.scriblio.net/about/
Scriblio is using Wordpress CMS-blog to create OPAC . Its live , and running one some library sites . As Scriblio is using wordpress ‘ therefore it can be extended with all wordpress capabilities . Scriblio modules can be found at wordpress extensions directory which any end user can install them as any wordpress plugin . It also integrate themes of wordpress and other features included as well .
oBiblioOPAC – Joomla : http://obiblioopac4j.sourceforge.net/ – http://sourceforge.net/projects/obiblioopac4j/
Its a Joomla component integrates Openbiblio with Joomla CMS . Free and open source .
Others :
Kochief : http://code.google.com/p/kochief/
Django based OPAC .
Library Manager : http://sourceforge.net/projects/libman/
Its not ILMS ” integrated library management system ” , but its useful tool to create collection of books , for school libraries , homes , small libraries . its licensed under GPL , and created using PHP .
Resources and links :
