EIFL: eIFL-FOSS Blog

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Koha and Eprints workshop, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia - report

(Guest blog post from Gantulga Lkhagva, Scientific Library of Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. This workshop was part of the eIFL-FOSS Skills and Tools Workshops initiative.)With support from eIFL.net, the Mongolian Libraries Consortium organized a 3-day Koha ILS and Eprints IR training workshop (14-16th, October 2009) for IT engineers and librarians in the Mongolian ...

Koha workshop, Mzuzu, Malawi - report

(Guest blog post report from Mzuzu University Library, Mzuzu, Malawi. This workshop was part of the eIFL-FOSS Skills and Tools Workshops initiative.)This one day KOHA ILS workshop which took place on 16 October 2009 was a follow up to the Debian GNU/Linux workshop that was previously held on 4–7 August 2009 at the Mzuzu University. During the first workshop, participants were taught ...

Linux Administration (Debian) and MySQL workshop, Limuru, Kenya - report

(Guest blog post from Mrs. Rosemary Ndegwa, University Librarian, St. Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya. This workshop was part of the eIFL-FOSS Skills and Tools Workshops initiative.)With support from eIFL.net, St. Paul’s University, Limuru organized a 4-day training workshop (17-20th August 2009) for Systems Librarians in the Kenya Library and Information Services Consortium (KLISC) ...

SPIP workshop, Bamako, Mali - report

(Guest blog post from Abdrahamane Anne of the Library of the Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Dentistry, University of Bamako, Mali. This workshop was part of the eIFL-FOSS Skills and Tools Workshops initiative.)Malian librarians learn how to use a FOSS content management systemAs a continuation of the skills and tools workshop series, The Malian Library Consortium (COMBI) in partnership with the ...

Debian GNU/Linux workshop, Mzuzu, Malawi - report

(Guest blog post from Mrs. Irene Sachs, Reader Services Librarian, Mzuzu University Library, Mzuzu, Malawi. This workshop was part of the eIFL-FOSS Skills and Tools Workshops initiative.)The Malawi Library and Information Consortium (MALICO) organised a 4-day workshop on the installation and use of Debian GNU/Linux servers, which was held at Mzuzu University, Mzuzu, Malawi, from 4 to 7 August ...

Joomla workshop, Dakar, Senegal - report

(Guest blog post from Mr.Youssoupha Gueye of Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal. This workshop was part of the eIFL-FOSS Skills and Tools Workshops initiative.)The the Consortium des Bibliothèues de l'Enseignement Supérieur du Sénégal (COBESS) organized a workshop of training on the administration and the use of content management system (CMS) Joomla from 13 till 17 July 2009 ...

Evergreen workshop, Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe - report

(Guest blog post from Prince T. Choguya of the Chinhoyi University Library, Zimbabwe. This workshop was part of the eIFL-FOSS Skills and Tools Workshops initiative.)The tools and skills Evergreen Library Management software was held for the first time in Zimbabwe at Chinhoyi University Library. It was the first ever workshop designed to promote the use of Evergreen Library Management Software in ...

PMB workshop, Bamako, Mali - report

(Guest blog post from Abdrahamane Anne of the Library of the Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Dentistry, University of Bamako, Mali. This workshop was part of the eIFL-FOSS Skills and Tools Workshops initiative.)"Yesterday,I tried to install PMB on my office desktop, but failed. The system was telling me that a file was missing," a participant at our recent PMB workshop told me just ...

PHP and MySQL workshop, Bamako, Mali - report

(Guest blog post from Abdrahamane Anne of the Library of the Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Dentistry, University of Bamako, Mali. This is the first of the workshops to take place in the eIFL-FOSS Skills and Tools Workshops initiative.) Behind the Scenes From 18 May to 22 May 2009, COMBI, the Malian Library Consortium, organized its first capacity building workshop on FOSS for librarians. ...

The first Evergreen International Conference, 2009 Athens (USA) – report

The first Evergreen International Conference was held in Athens (USA) on May 20-22, 2009. I submitted a presentation “Evergreen in Armenia” and after acceptance of the paper by the Conference Organizing Committee, eIFL sponsored my trip and Conference participation.More than 150 participants (most from USA and Canada) were attending this meeting, and according to overall ...

Evergreen Training for Ilia Chavchavadze State University Library Staff

The Fundamental Scientific Library (FSL) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Armenia is actively involved in implementing the Evergreen FOSS ILS in the NAS institution libraries and in advocating the system amongst the librarians from the developing countries. During April 6-7 Ilia Chavchavadze State University (Tbilsi, Georgia) library director Natia Gabrichidze and two IT specialists ...

LTSP in Bamako, Mali

Recently I was in Bamako, Mali, visiting the ever impressive Abdrahamane Anne at the Library of the Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Dentistry, University of Bamako. The purpose of my visit was to gather information for a case study on the Koha ILS pilot work that Anne, as he is known, is leading there. I spent two full days with Anne as he walked me through his methodology for exporting ...

Meeting the FOSS challenge in Kathmandu

Recently I spent a couple days in Kathmandu, Nepal, visiting the team of library IT professionals at Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (MPP) which is conducting one of the pilots for the eIFL-FOSS ILS project. Dibyendra Hyoju is the technical lead on this Evergreen pilot with Amar Gurung, his Director as well as eIFL-FOSS country coordinator, providing careful oversight. A case study of this pilot will ...

The Square of Engagement

Recently I was thinking about institutional engagement with free and open source software (FOSS). I had been asked to open a day-long workshop on the relevance of a FOSS integrated library system (ILS) for academic libraries. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that libraries have a vast array of FOSS they are busy deploying. Everything from Apache web servers, to Drupal content ...

Documentation: not just another pretty face

I have always thought that documentation was a vital component of any FOSS project. But recently the value of documentation was illuminated for me in a new way. This has me rethinking the basis of the importance of documentation for a FOSS project at nearly any stage of development.Let me describe the case that prompts this reflection. A long-term (2 to 3 year) user of an enterprise software ...

Free Software and Open Source Symposium 2008, Toronto - report

I was struck by a number of thoughts during the recent FSOSS 2008 event at Seneca College in Toronto. First, one cannot attend an event like this without coming away feeling as though FOSS is totally mainstream these days. The four parallel sets of presentations running over the two days of FSOSS 2008 showed FOSS in many lights. As well as a number of talks about integrated development ...

Greenstone training workshop, Nairobi, Kenya, 22-26 September 2008 - report

(Guest blog post from Amos Kujenga, National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Library, Zimbabwe)The week before last, Misheck Nyaluso and I were at the University of Nairobi where we conducted a 5-day Greenstone Workshop (from Monday 22 - Friday 26 September). The event was sponsored by UNESCO (Nairobi Cluster Office), organised by the Kenya Information Preservation Society (KIPS), and ...

ACCESS2008: Library Technology Conference, 2-4 October 2008 - report

Maybe it's just me but sometimes I need to recharge my batteries. Here is my solution: spend a couple of days with energized library technologists, FOSS developers, and systems librarians. Well, I did say that maybe it's just me. Fortunately my batteries got a full charge this week at Access2008, Canada's première library technology conference, which was being hosted just down the road from me ...

The Code4Lib Journal - essential reading

As readers of this blog will know, I am not a professional librarian, and I am also not, by training, a programmer. Fortunately for me, around the time I started working closely with librarians and (even more scary?) software developers for libraries The Code4Lib Journal was launched. Its mission is to foster community and share information among those interested in the intersection of libraries, ...

NewGenLib - a new FOSS ILS ready for use

NewGenLib, which stands for New Generation Library, is an integrated library system (ILS) that some of you, especially those in India, Syria, Sudan, or Cambodia, will already know. It is the product of a 4-year collaboration between the Kesavan Institute of Information and Knowledge Management (KIIKM) and Verus Solutions Pvt. Limited (VSPL), both based in Hyderabad, India. Toward the end of 2007 ...