DigitalKoans

Version 1.0 (stable release branch) of the Kete digital library software has been released.

Here's an excerpt about Kete from Katipo Communications' "Kete is Open Source Digital Library and Archiving Software":

Kete is an Open Source application written in Ruby on Rails, released under the GPL. Initial development has been a partnership between the Horowhenua Library Trust and Katipo Communications Ltd. funded as part of the Community Partnership Fund in 2006.

Kete stores, organises, indexes and retrieves all sorts of digital files including Office documents, PDF's, images, videos, audio such as spoken word and music, website links, and html pages/text.

Kete encourages you to make links between different items that enable users to browse your collection. It also faciltates discussion about items and topics, so you can build understanding and foster collaboration.

Read more about it at "Kete 1.0 Release Branch and Upgraded Kete.net.nz."

A beta version of the MODS Editor, which uses the Cocoon Forms framework, has been released by Peter Binkley of the University of Alberta Libraries. (See MODS: Uses and Features for a description of MODS.)

Read more about it at "MODS Editor at Last."

The first beta version of the DSpace 1.5 repository software is now available.

Read more about at "DSpace 1.5 Beta 1 Released."

Bess Sadler has released version .1 of Blacklight, an open source "next generation library catalog written in ruby, using solr as the underlying search engine."

The project team from the Five Colleges, Inc., New York University Libraries, and the UCSD Libraries have released Version 1.1 of the Archivists' Toolkit.

Here's an excerpt from the project's home page that describes the new features of the release:

• Batch import of EAD files: target a directory containing the EAD files to be imported and import all EAD files in the directory
• Batch export of EAD and MARCXML records: from the resource browse screen select two or more resources that you want to export as either EAD files or MARCXML records
• Import of XML encoded accession data: Import of multiple names using the XML import method.  Use the accessionsImport.xsd file to map your accession data and to create an accessions import file
• EAD schema: replaces the EAD DTD for importing / exporting EAD files
• Extended accession record: includes new fields, including many user definable
• Extended repository record: includes new fields for recording repository statistics, per recommendations of Archival Metrics Project
• Support for other database backends. In addition to the open source database backend MySQL, the application can be run using either Oracle or MS SQL server as a backend
• Updated documentation. User manual and additional documentation have been updated to reflect new features

Podcasts are now available from CNI's Fall 2007 Task Force Meeting. Here's a selection:

• CNI Podcast: An Interview with Cathrine Harboe-Ree, University Librarian at Monash University
• CNI Podcast: An Interview with Jim Neal, VP for Information Services and University Librarian, Columbia University
• CNI Podcast: An Interview with Julian Lombardi, Executive Director of the Open Croquet Consortium
• CNI Podcast: An Interview with Kate Wittenberg, Director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC)
• CNI Podcast: An Interview with Roger C. Schonfeld, Manager of Research at Ithaka
• CNI Podcast: An Interview with Timo Hannay, Publishing Director for Nature.com

The Kesavan Institute of Information and Knowledge Management and Verus Solutions Pvt. Ltd. have announced that their NewGenLib integrated library system is now an open source system.

An alpha version of Wikia's open source Wikia Search has gone public, but the consensus seems to be that this user-tuned search engine has a long way to go to compete with the likes of Google.

Read more about it at "Jimmy Wales Argues That His Wikia Needs More Time," "Wiki Citizens Taking on a New Area: Searching," "Wikia Launching Human-Powered Search," "Wikia Search Alpha Preview Leaves Much to Be Desired," "Wikia Search Is A Complete Letdown," and"Wikia Search—Miles Behind the Competition."

Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite, the latest Digital Scholarship publication, is designed to give the reader a very quick introduction to key aspects of institutional repositories and to foster further exploration of this topic though liberal use of relevant references to online documents and links to pertinent websites. It is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License, and it can be freely used for any noncommercial purpose in accordance with the license.