An Open Source Alternative for Libraries

Abstract

As Linux becomes a major operating system and Apache becomes the most popular Web server today, the concept of Open Source Software (OSS) has been familiar to many people. Software developers from all over the world have been contributing their efforts to build a huge OSS community that will exercise a great impact on various disciplines. Librarians and information professionals have foreseen the magnitude of this impact and believed that this relatively new model would bring lots of benefits to libraries. This article discusses and compares some major OSS projects particularly useful to libraries, and proposes a real-life OSS solution for your library based on the author’s first-hand experience.