Information architecture - parallel planning for digital and physical services

Lars Noodén
For The Pysical Library and Beyond
Library as Place and the Library in Cyberspace
Järvenpää, Finland, 11-12 August 2005

Appendix A: Interesting Tools for Libraries

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but merely meant to highlight some of the more useful and flexible tools available. Any of these, with the exception of Opera, can be freely modified, customized or re-distributed. It is even possible to use only the relevant components and remove the rest. It is possible to purchase support, training, custom development or professional services. Some companies specialize in a specific product. It is also possible to form project groups to add specific functionality or features.

All of these tools rely on open standards, which means that it is easier to replace or combine them with other tools.

Useful Software for Desktops and Public Terminals

These tools can be useful on staff desktop machines or some public terminals:

Productivity tools or suites

OpenOffice.org

Productivity suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, vector graphics, and an equation editor. Handles styles and long documents very well. Supports EU-recommended, XML-based, international file format OpenDocument. Available in many languages.

• Writer - word processing
• Calc - spread sheet
• Presenter - presentation graphics
• Draw - vector graphics
• Base - front end for relational databses

http://fi.openoffice.org/

StarOffice

Similar to OpenOffice.org, but with paid support and available only in ten languages.

http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/faq.xml

Browsers

Mozilla

Web-browser, advanced e-mail and newsgroup client, chat client, and HTML editing. Flexible and secure.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/

Firefox

Small and fast. Extensible with add-ons. Secure.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Opera

Not open source but smallest, fastest and secure.

http://www.opera.com/

Mail clients

Thunderbird

Fast, secure, spam filters, sorting.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

Mozilla

Advanced e-mail, web browser and newsgroup client, chat client, and HTML editing

http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/

Eudora

Not open source and limited to Mac OS 9, OS X, and MS-Windows but otherwise excellent.

http://eudora.com/

Audio

Audio Editing

Audacity

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.

Record live audio. Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs. Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files. Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together. Change the speed or pitch of a recording.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Ardour

Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. (For advanced users.)

http://ardour.org/

Audio players

XMMS

XMMS is a multimedia player for unix systems and can play media files such as MP3, MOD's, WAV and others, such as Ogg Vorbis, with the use of Input plugins. XMMS is mainly targeted at music playback. For five years in a row XMMS has been voted Favourite Audio Tool by the readers of LinuxJournal.

http://www.xmms.org/

Winamp

Winamp is not open source, but there is a no-fee version as well as a paid version.

http://www.winamp.com/

Graphics

Gimp

The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Excellent for digital photography or other RGB image manipulation. Not a competitor to Photoshop, but still more powerful than what most users or your average digital photographer will need.

http://www.gimp.org/

Blender

Blender is an integrated suite of tools for the creation of 3D content. It offers full functionality for modelling, rendering, animation, post-production, creation and playback of interactive 3D content. (For advanced users.)

http://www.blender.org/

Useful Server-side Tools

These tools can be used to provide useful services for library patrons and staff:

Networked Storage

Samba

Samba is an Open Source/Free Software suite that provides seamless network storage and print services to SMB/CIFS clients. Rather quick to install and configure.

http://us2.samba.org/samba/

OpenAFS

AFS is a distributed filesystem, useful for networked storage, pioneered at Carnegie Mellon University and supported and developed as a product by Transarc Corporation (now IBM Pittsburgh Labs). It offers a client-server architecture for networked storage (aka file sharing), providing location independence, scalability and transparent migration capabilities for data.

http://openafs.org/

Useful Server-based Tools

RequestTracker

RT is an open source issue tracking / workflow program (aka electronic reference desk) by Best Practical Solutions LLC. Used by universities, government agencies and Fortune 100 companies. RT doesn't cost anything to copy or use, no matter how much you use it, but RT is commercially supported software.

http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/

Koha

Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS), developed initially in New Zealand by Katipo Communications Ltd and Horowhenua Library Trust. It is MARC and UNIMARC compliant and uses perl, MySQL, and Apache.

http://www.koha.org/

Greenstone

Greenstone is an open source, multi-lingual suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO

http://www.greenstone.org/cgi-bin/library

Squid

Squid is one of the most popular full-featured Web proxy cache systems. It supports proxying and caching of HTTP, FTP, and other URLs, proxying for SSL, cache hierarchies, caching of DNS lookups, and much more. Highly configurable.

http://www.squid-cache.org/

Terminal Servers

Linux Terminal Server Project

LTSP is an add-on package for Linux that allows you to connect lots of low-powered thin client terminals to a Linux server. Applications typically run on the server, and accept input and display their output on the thin client display. Allows really old/slow computers to perform faster by using the server for processing and the old/slow computer only for dislay, input and output.

http://ltsp.org/

K12Linux in Schools Project

K12LTSP is based on RedHat Fedora Linux and the LTSP terminal server packages. It lets you boot diskless workstations from an applications server. You can use old PC's as diskless clients or buy new ones for under 200 € each, since all applications run on the terminal server itself and not on the client. Workstations are "thin" and have no software or hard drives. Thin-clients are perfect for schools because they are easy to install and require little maintenance. They are reliable and immune to malicious tampering and viruses.

http://www.k12ltsp.org/

Interesting Distros

Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. The current Ubuntu release supports Intel x86 (IBM-compatible PC), AMD64 (Hammer) and PowerPC (Apple iBook and Powerbook, G4 and G5) architectures. Ubuntu includes more than 16,000 pieces of software, but the core installation fits on a single CD.

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

Skolelinux

Skolelinux is made as free (as in speech) software, and is an overall computer solution based on school's resources and needs. It is a customized Debian distribution. Skolelinux is a network architecture tailored for use in schools, developed and supported by a large and growing international community, designed to be easy and cheap to maintain and gives the students their own usernames, home directories and services.

http://www.skolelinux.org/portal/

Debian

Debian is a free (as in speech) operating system for your computer. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux. It provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 15490 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.

http://www.debian.org/

Graphical User Interfaces

KDE

KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for Linux, Unix and similar workstations. It is highly flexible and easy to use. KDE has a kiosk mode useful for kiosks and public terminals.

http://www.kde.org/

Fluxbox

Fluxbox is yet another window manager for X. It has KDE support, but is much, much smaller.

http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/

Cross-platform development kits

There are sometimes things that are easier to do with a piece of dedicated client software than via a web interface. However, then the big risk is getting locked into a specific platform.

Qt

Used even in mobile phones. Available in a dual license: GPL or commercial.

http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/

GTK+

GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. GTK+ has a complete set of widgets and is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off projects to complete application suites. It is Free Software and part of the GNU Project. However, the licensing terms for GTK+, the GNU LGPL, allow it to be used by all developers, including those developing proprietary software, without any license fees or royalties.

http://www.gtk.org/

Other Kernels

Nearly all users and even most programmers will not notice one way or the other which kernel is used. However, depending on the service or activity, one kernel may offer advantages over another. It's generally not a big deal, though. Generally, the applications and tools are the same and based on the GNU project.

Linux

Common versions of the kernel are 2.2, 2.4, and 2.6. Not to be confused with linux distributions, which are complete operating sytstems plus applications.

http://www.kernel.org/

BSD

There are three variants: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD each with a special focus. Advances in one are usually quickly ported to the others. The newer Macintoshes have been using BSD for the last five years or so.

QNX

A closed source, yet very reliable microkernel whose main selling point is reliability for years at a time.

http://www.qnx.com/

Mon Aug 8 18:36:04 EEST 2005