A small patch and a big trip

My first patch for VuFind has been accepted and merged into the upstream release. This was just a simple one-liner that now allows the use of the ‘&’ character in VuFind’s MySQL password.
Tomorrow, I head down to Hamilton for Access 2008. The programme looks great and I’m looking forward to meeting a whole bunch of [...]

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More on the Thomson Reuters/Zotero lawsuit

Peter Murray has an excellent analysis of the Zotero lawsuit in this blog post of his. The highlight:
“I’d note that it doesn’t look like the Thomson legal team actually had anyone look at the Zotero code. The complaint alleges that “users of Zotero [are freely converting] the EndNote Software’s proprietary .ens style files into open [...]

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RDA: Another digital fiasco in the making?

After recently stumbling across Johannesen’s criticism of MARCXML, another interesting blog entry regarding cataloguing crossed my RSS reader this morning.
This post on Inquiring Librarian talks about the possibility of RDA turning into yet another missed opportunity to sanely digitize cataloguing data:
“RDA is supposed to be “made for the digital world.” This is something I can [...]

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Proprietary Software: You don’t own your data anymore

Zotero is being sued by Thomson Reuters, the makers of Endnote and one of their proprietary competitors. The reason?
“A significant and highly touted feature of the new beta version of Zotero, however, is its ability to convert – in direct violation of the License Agreement – Thomson’s 3,500 plus proprietary .ens style files within the [...]

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MARCXML – Same ol’ MARC wrapped in terrible XML

“…there is something so anti-XML about the way MARCXML was designed…”
So says Alexander Johannesen in this excellent blog post. I wholeheartedly agree with him – I’ve never seen XML abused quite like this.

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Evergreen 1.2.3.1 released

The latest stable version of Evergreen, 1.2.3.1, can now be downloaded. It includes a whole bunch of fixes and is likely the last 1.2.3.x release before the 1.4 release candidates start becoming available.
In other news, I managed to import some sample MARC data into my 1.2.3.0 installation without too much trouble. However, I suspect that [...]

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Evergreen ACQ Preview; VuFind Patch

The folks over at Evergreen are busy getting ready for their 1.4 release. Apparently, the first release candidate will be ready for the end of September. In the meantime, they’ve also posted a video preview of their new acquisition system, which will be released in version 2.0.
I installed VuFind this morning, which was quick and [...]

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Evergreen on Ubuntu 8.04

Evergreen has installation instructions for Ubuntu 7.10. Using those same instructions, I have now managed to get it running on Ubuntu 8.04 without too much trouble.
Really, the only 8.04-specific trouble that I ran into was with the Staff Client, which wanted XULRunner 1.8.x (Ubuntu 8.04 comes with XULRunner 1.9.x). If it’s not beyond me, I [...]

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Citation Management: Proprietary RefWorks vs Open Source Zotero

My undergrad was spent in a lab, so most of my academic efforts were usually exported in the form of lab reports. Citations were never required (or useful) for those types of papers. When I began my MLIS in January 2008, I realized that I would need some help with my papers, particularly when it [...]

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I get suckered in by the little things

I’ve been using Google’s Chrome web browser at work (the only place where I have access to a Windows machine). It’s growing on me because of a few small, easily-copied features – mostly little things that have to do with tabs.

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