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Jerry Kline is launching a new company called SkyRiver (website launching today).  Jerry is the owner and co-founder of Innovative Interfaces.  The new company "aims to expand the market and offer an alternative bibliographic utility for cataloging that could save libraries up to 40 percent off their expenditures for bibliographic services."

As reported by Marshall Breeding in the 10/6/09 issue of Library Journal (New Company SkyRiver Sparks Cataloging Compe

Dan Scott is offering an Evergreen Developer Basics Workshop at the Free Software Open Source Symposium (FSOSS) being held in Toronto on October 29th, 2009.

Here's the workshop description:

Over the past year, Evergreen has been adopted by a number of libraries in Ontario.

From the OITP website:  The ALA Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) has released the official version of its policy brief, “Fiber to the Library: How Public Libraries Can Benefit.” The purpose of this paper is to assist libraries in understanding the benefits of fiber optic technology and to suggest strategies they can consider when exploring how to obtain fiber connectivity.

Wow! Kudos to King County Library System and Bill Ptacek who won't take no for an answer. They got an award for $998,556 from IMLS for their project entitled "Empowered By Open Source." I'm proud to say I was involved in the writing of the grant, but I also have to admit that I recommended we go for a "planning grant" of $100,000 first rather than trying for the bigger award off the bat.

If you are trying to make sense of what is going on with Liblime and Koha.  This is the article for you (by Kathryn Greenhill at her blog Libraries Matter Librarians Matter):

The Koha fork and being the change you want to see

The Equinox Promise: An Open Letter to the Evergreen Community

We at Equinox Software feel it is timely to share an evolving document we call the Equinox Promise.

We invite engagement and feedback from everyone, and encourage other vendors to come up with similar statements, or join in on ours.

The Equinox Promise

In 2007, Equinox Software was founded by a group of dedicated people who believe that open source software offers libraries unheralded opportunities to engage in the process of designing the tools they use.

A software company can never speak for the open source communi

This announcement from Liblime officially established a forked version of Koha (or possibly two versions: see their new "budget-friendly ILS for Small Libraries").  This is a sad day for the larger Koha development community.

Not sure if you've been following the developments with Koha but there is a strong movement afoot to develop a Koha Foundation.  This impetus in no small part due to issues with Liblime who has been a strong supporter and development partner for Koha but has come under fire recently about how they are doing business. You may have noticed that some of their employees have left Liblime for other OS projects (e.g.

If you have ever wondered how materials handling automation could fit into your library environment, you might enjoy this study I did for a client.

Just finished doing a webinar with Infopeople called Open Source Library Systems: Free is Just the Tip of the Iceberg.