I've played with VuFind and Blacklight on test - never production - and would rate both products. While there are differences, there are also a lot of similarities, as they both make use of the same underlying technology stack (SolrMarc + Solr/Lucence).
One major difference is that VuFind is written in php (at least, the bits that sit over the top of the underlying tech stack); while Blacklight is written in Ruby. If I was recommending one of these for a production environment I guess one of the major questions I'd ask is whether local support/ability was available with each of these languages - while I think you could in theory run either without a huge amount of knowledge of Ruby/PHP there would be a risk attached to using one where you had no support for the language locally.
I can't see any reason why either of these shouldn't work with Koha - but probably needs some more definition of 'works with'. In both cases (VuFind/Blacklight) the main requirement is your LMS can export MARC records - either as binary MARC or MARCXML. If you want to be able to expose holdings or availability information in the discovery interface things get a little more complex and that's really where the question of integration comes up - especially if you are looking for someone to have done this already.
Owen
Owen Stephens
Owen Stephens Consulting
Web: http://www.ostephens.com
Email: owen_at_ostephens.com
Telephone: 0121 288 6936
On 10 Oct 2013, at 20:04, Chad Roseburg <croseburg_at_ncrl.org> wrote:
> Tom ~
>
> Are you aware of any Koha libraries currently using Blacklight? There is
> work being done integrating Blacklight and Koha https://beacon.wmu.se/,
> but it seems there are still work to be done.
>
> Will keep an eye on it, thanks!
>
> Chad
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 9:29 AM, Tom Cramer <tcramer_at_stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>> Chad,
>>
>> If you haven't already come across it, you may also want to look at
>> Blacklight:
>>
>> http://projectblacklight.org/
>>
>>
>> - Tom
>>
>>
>> On Oct 9, 2013, at 1:37 PM, Chad Roseburg wrote:
>>
>> We use Koha [ community version ] and are considering a discovery service
>> layer. Any fans of VUfind or Bibliocommons [ other software? ] wish to
>> share their experiences here.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> --
>> Chad Roseburg
>> Automation Dept.
>> North Central Regional Library
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Chad Roseburg
> Automation Dept.
> North Central Regional Library
Received on Fri Oct 11 2013 - 05:16:34 EDT