Got this the other day from an excellent Development List called Bytesforall run by a friend from Bangladesh, Partha Pratim Sarker. Its about other friends from Wellington NZ called Katipo Communications who create some very cool software.

It also happened that Katipo's Simon Blake has a mum who runs a small library that needed an admin system but couldn't afford a commercial one. So Simon built her one and her library made it Open Source. Now its turning up everywhere.

Great people, excellent attitude. Kiwis of course.

Libraries seeking to save on the cost of proprietary library systems are turning to a maturing open source alternative called Koha.

In library speak, Koha is an ILS (Integrated Library System). In other words, it is the software that public, school, and academic libraries use to handle cataloguing, circulation, acquisition of new media, and patron access.

The market for ILSs is robust. Examples of offerings in this space include Innopac by Innovative Interfaces, Advance from Geac, and Voyager by Endeavor Information Systems. Voyager, for example, is installed in the National Library of Australia in Canberra.

Unlike the above-mentioned products, Koha -- the world's first open source library system -- is free. It was originally developed by New Zealand firm Katipo Communications (www.katipo.co.nz) in 1999. Koha (pronounced "kaw ha", a Maori word meaning gift or donation) was subsequently released under the GNU General Public License and is today maintained by a team of volunteer developers from around the world.

Koha 1.9.0 was released in early February. Like the numbering system used in Linux, the "9" in 1.9 means there are still some stability issues to be addressed in this version, explained Paul Poulain, a Koha developer based in France.

"It is a preview of the 2.0.0 release, and should not be used for production work," said another developer, Pat Eyler. "On the other hand, if you're keen to start using Koha in the [northern] summer/fall [autumn], grabbing 1.9.0 to play with (and help test) will let you see what kinds of things 2.0.0 will be doing -- albeit with some bugs, incomplete features, etc.," said Eyler, a US-based manager of the Koha project.

Because it is a professional-orientated software (that is, not for home libraries), Koha manages most of the international libraries standards such as MARC and Z39.50 (also known as Information Retrieval Protocol).

MARC is the acronym for MAchine-Readable Cataloguing. It defines a data format that provides the mechanism by which computers exchange, use and interpret bibliographic information and its data elements make up the foundation of most library catalogues used today. The Z39.50 standard specifies the formats and procedures for the exchange of messages when an origin searches a target database and retrieves records.

"The MARC part, the biggest one, is really stable now. It's used in a Christian library here in France since December, without problem," Poulain said.

The 2.0 version will add even more MARC support, full templating, themes and language support. Translations to French, Polish, Chinese and Spanish are on the way. It will also sport many enhancements such as reserve book for patrons, non ISO-5589-1 support, and extended login and rights managements, Poulain said.

Given its late entry into a crowded marketplace, and its continuing development, Koha has only handful of installations -- 20 at last count. But the developers hope to expand its appeal when Version 2.0 is released, most likely at the end of March. Two recent installations were at the Nelsonville Public Library in the US and Philanthropy Australia.

Philanthropy Australia installed Koha mid-2002. The organisation, based in Melbourne, is the national membership body for the philanthropic sector. Its library is used by members, policy makers, journalists and researchers seeking information on topics such as welfare, people with disabilities, and age concerns.

Louise Arkles, Philanthropy Australia's resource centre librarian, said the primary reason for selecting Koha was its free cost. "That [money saved] would enable us to put money into customising it," she said.

Proprietary library systems were considered by her library team but all had "issues" and, more importantly, had "significant ongoing costs" such as the need for additional modules (which were necessary for the library to obtain a customised solution). "It ended up looking costly and fairly expensive," she said.

Today, more than six months on, Arkles says she is impressed with the performance and features of the ILS. She said one exciting feature of the new system for Philanthropy Australia is the fact it is Web-enabled. Additionally, catalogue searches yield a page with the requested information plus a list of other relevant Web resources and hyperlinks to those resources.

Currently, developers are working to iron out bugs of release 1.9.0. This will be followed by 1.9.1 and then 2.0.RC1 (Release Candidate). To find out more on the Koha project go to http://www.koha.org.

At the beginning of every revolution the claim goes out that "this will change everything". In the middle somewhere, disillusion sets in and we hear "its all a crock". But further down the track we realise that the revolution has changed everything, just not how we thought it would.

It happened with TV which didn't change the way we taught our kids in school, although it transformed their education, not for the better. Motor vehicles surely did that, although their phases were Doubt, enthusiasm and disillusion in that order, (see the Piece on on London.

But the internet has done all that stuff in the blink of an eye and the news is that it is not about "Video conferenceing" or Video on Demand" or eCommerce, it is about shifting power. The ability to organsie globally has become the tool of the "Smart Mob", and even the Sydney Morning Herald is acknowledging the reality, and trying to document it.

Webdiarist Peter Funnel is quoted in Mahgo Kingston's Web Diary.

It has extended the range and sophistication of communications exponentially. People are not just getting information about the war on Iraq, they are developing communities of interest around the globe to explore their knowledge and feelings, form opinions, support each other, and provide courage and understanding. The www has absolutely rubbished Bush, Blair and Howard over Iraq. It has neutralised spin. It can't be controlled and people are finding ways to become very well informed. Every person can have a voice and as you say, "self select", and that is incredibly democratic and inclusive.</a>
The most important line is "It has neutralised spin". When you can't open your mouth without having have the planet climbing down your throat inspecting your tonsils, new strategies are in order. So far, no sign. Keep watching.

How long is it since clever marketing people, in complete misunderstanding of the interaction between us and our information technologies, started pushing the idea of Interactive TV. usually this meant that we would be given some options even more mind numbing than the actual programmes but occasionally worked up to the frenzy of being able to "be our own producers" selecting the shots WE wanted from today's game etc etc. Occasionally it worked up to the heights of "Video on Demand" until the realities of the technology began to set in.

The realities being the kind generated by Napster, Kazaa, ReplayTV and TiVo which put the fear of God into the media business as they watched their one real commodity, control of our attention, disappear.

AOL came at the idea from the other end, the Internet end, but the result is the same, oblivion. America Online confirms end of AOLTV

The reality is that without control of our attention, TV is a zero, the quality of content is legendary but it works for the same reason that cigarettes work. Nicotine really does give a lift, it temporarily quells anxiety and imparts a feeling of wellbeing while it eats your lungs. That's what we want of a drug and the people who are most likely to use it are those whose lives are marginally depressing. TV is the other end of that spectrum and takes over the focus of consciousness, relieving us of all thought, and is equally the drug of mild depression. Some recent research indicates that the more depressed you are, the longer it takes you to shift attention from the TV. But depressed people don't want to interact with things and even less do they want to "buy the shirt that Tom cruise is wearing while he..."

Interactive TV is an oxymoron, partly because of its function in our lives and partly because the networks have utterly no intention of permitting their viewers to have any say whatever over substantive matters to do with their communication.

The Internet however, is for active people, who DO interact with the network, you don't GET another screen unless you interact, and most of us go a LOT further, joining and contributing to listservs, blazing away on discussion groups, chatting and now, Blogging. The Internet is actually for engaged, active, thoughtful, demanding people; no wonder the media and entertainment people keep getting creamed by it.

Great story on Nature's site about the surface structure of diatoms. It turns out that the lacy filigree patterns that grace their shells increase their mechanical strength to between 100 and 700 Tonnes per square metre. When they were first discovered they were thought to be crystals because of their design. Now, the questions that arise from this for me are;</p>

1. How did this happen? What was the process that made room for these patterns to emerge from the shells and make them so strong


2. because they look like snowflakes, is there a similar, practical purpose to the pattern of snowflakes


3. How does each branch of the snowflake pattern "know" that all the others are going to fork at 20% of their length, fork again on each fork at 30% and so on? I can see why local conditions might enable/ require a fork on a given branch, but how does that get transmitted to all the others and how does it happen simultaneously?

For several years I've had a strategy for phone "surveys" who "just want 15 minutes of my time. My answer is always yes, with one small proviso. I tell the hapless caller that I assume they are collecting information that they sell, in some processed form, to a client. They usually answer yes. At which point I inform them that I too sell information and they can have as much of mine as they like, for $1 a minute. So far, no takers, but its a harmless entertainment.

On the other hand I'm deadly serious. In the Information Economy, you have to return value for the information you collect. Since the only return I'm likely to get from these surveys is a contact from a business ever better armed to pick my pocket, I've started to make the cost of that a little more explicit. Of course, when they refuse to pay, the cost on my information becomes infinite, but that's tough luck.

looks like I'm not alone. Cox Crow points up some serious action surrounding the value of our time. Including a link to this story about a lawsuit that alleges fraud, deceptive advertising, and breach of contract in cases where theaters start movies later than the advertised time in order to show advertisements.

It wasn't that long ago that Jack Valenti of AOL Time Warner was clear that "not watching the adverts is theft of the programme". Looks like that sword has sprung another edge called "showing us adverts is theft of our time".

In the networked world, be careful of what you start, the collectively knowledge of the people online is greater than any individual or company, you willgo down.