> Tim Spalding wrote:
>
>> LibraryThing is part of a trend. The last two years have seen an
>> enormous explosion in web aps.... It comes down to this. Web aps.
>> are becoming radically easier and cheaper to build and run. They
>> are becoming almost a comodity. OPACs *ARE* web aps....
>
Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
>
> Yes, technically speaking OPACs (or what ever we are going to be
> calling these things) are essentially Web applications.
>
OPACs *can* have web access aps, many do but not all. Most are allowing
read access over the Web now, but not input and editing.
> There is no magic here. Just a database to store the data and an
> index to make the data searchable. You can purchase these pieces of
> software, but the purchased software are technically no better than
> the free, open source software. So why are we paying for it? We pay
> for it because we, the library profession as a whole, does not have
> the critical mass of computer skills to create these thing on our
> own.
And the reason for this lack of skills is the outsourcing paradigm that
dominated much of recent library technical services history.
>... but I am saying that until we raise our
> level of knowledge we will continue to be held hostage to commercial
> software that does not do what we want it to do.
>
There's a software in Germany, "allegro-C" by name, which is the result
of a long-term commitment (over 25 years in fact) of one library that
still keeps improving on it. Internally, it does not use SQL but a
more appropriate, homegrown technique. All application-critical parts
are open source, partly in application specific languages developed
specifically for it, not XML or somesuch. Well over 1.000 libraries in
Germany are using it, mostly special libraries. Many of those have
enough technical know-how to fiddle with the setup all by themselves,
and they typically lack the money to pay anybody except their own staff.
Here's a list of some of those who have installed web access:
http://www.allegro-c.de/ac-dbs.htm
The software used locally has many more functions, of course, and is
Windows-based (upwards of '95). The largest database to date has over
15 Million records and can run on any contemporary PC box, using
9.5 GB of disk storage.
Regards, B. Eversberg
Received on Tue Jun 20 2006 - 09:18:27 EDT