Computers in Libraries 2010 Day 3 - New & Open Source Tools

This was one of the great little sessions at Computers in Libraries where some people who have been closely watching and testing what's been coming out for the past year run down their list of favorite items.

The first of the two presenters was Darlene Fichter of the University of Saskatchewan. Her presentation on free tools included the following gems that sound like they may be quite useful for my purposes worth:

• Image editing with Aviary (aviary.com)

• HTMLIPSUM html-ipsum.com (use to test a style sheet)
  

• Are My Sites Up (aremysitesup.com). Monitor up to 5 sites 25 times per day for free.
  

• Checking out the Buzz (socialmention.com)

• Xmarks (www.xmarks.com) (formerly foxmarks) Bookmark sync for IE, Firefox, Chrome & Safari. Lets you tap into the hive mind of what other people have thought about it.

The second half of the presentation was done by Nicole C. Engard (whose book Library Mashups : Exploring New Ways to Deliver Library Data I had just purchased) investigated the world of open source software. Being rather familiar with open source software (the computer I brought to the conference and on which I am typing this is running Linux, and I follow various RSS feeds discussing new releases in open source software constantly) I quickly began to wonder if there was anything new she would have. But I needn't have feared as she mentioned the following interesting projects of which I'd previously heard nothing but sound quite useful:

• Siwapp (www.siwapp.org) invoicing. Track payments and due dates. Generate invoices in PDF

• Limesurvey (www.limesurvey.org). Hosted on your servers. Unlimited questions/surveys. Multilanguage surveys.

• Libki (www.libki.org) Kiosk management system. Web-based admin area. Manage library computer users. Manage library patron's time on computers.

• Zotero (www.zotero.org) Citation Management. Citations stored in Firefox & on the web. Shared libraries. Online groups. Generate bibliographies with a couple clicks. Online PDF storage for full text.

• Libstats (code.google.com/p/libstats/) Reference Statistics. Simple screen on a browser. Track reference questions. Data on server

• Omeka (www.omeka.org) Professional-looking online exhibits for your digital collections. Tagging and RSS

If one or more of these tools turns out to be useful, I think this session will have been well worth it.