Library

The library is a collection that we have assembled over the years through our day to day donations. Outside the Monkey House contains the books of our library. There is a list of Books We Want to look out for (or request).

Library Software

One of the problems with establishing a lending library has been keeping track of the inventory. Recently In 2005, Kevin Turner asked freshmeat about relevant applications and put the top contenders here, but there have been additions. An interesting resource site is oss4lib.

Koha

(if this page doesn't work, try Koha's Sourceforge page)

Used by real public libraries in the actual New Zealand in the present day. Web and curses interfaces written in Perl.

(Doesn't appear to have a debian package, but is used on Debian by the developers. - MW 13:58, 1 June 2007 (PDT))

Open Media Lending Database

aka OpenDB. Shows signs of reasonably recent development. Web interface written in PHP. package opendb 0.81p18-2 in debian etch. (domain for this project is down and for sale, last news this jan - MW 13:53, 1 June 2007 (PDT))

Alexandria

Seems targeted at much smaller installations than Koha, more like a personal collection manager that happens to also have a field for who the book is lent to. Under current development. Gnome interface written in Ruby. package alexandria 0.6.1-1 in debian etch.

Tellico

Like Alexandria in scope, but with a KDE interface written in C++. Under current development. package tellico 1.2.5-1 in debian etch.

Pro - easy to install, easy to use, imports data from online sources, easy checkout checkin

Con - apparently single-user app. stores file in userspace, needs to save on program close

Emilda

This is the another one the library is thinking about. Either this or Koha. It isn't in Debian right now, but there's a Debian apt repository you can add to /etc/apt/sources.list, then you can apt-get it. (Unfortunately only available for Sarge - MW 12:19, 1 June 2007 (PDT))

OpenBiblio

OpenBiblio is an easy to use, automated library system written in PHP containing OPAC, circulation, cataloging, and staff administration functionality.