oss4lib

As seen at Rubyforge: Blacklight is "a next generation library catalog written in ruby, using solr as the underlying search engine. All you have to do is export your marc records, index them with the scripts provided, start up ruby on rails, and you're on your way to faceted browsing bliss."

Links to a demo, docs, and the project list are all available at blacklight.rubyforge.org.

The LibraryFind crew has released version 0.8.2, which promises:

• Improved out-of-the-box user interface
• re-worked html/css architecture to support easier design customization
• new generic graphic design for out-of-the-box UI
• many, many bugfixes

Try this latest version out live at OSU.

A copy is attached.

Hammer writes: "We're delighted to announce the release of another new product: Simple2ZOOM, a sort of universal Swiss Army gateway that proxies between Z39.50, SRU, SRU/POST and SRW. Although nearly all testing so far has been with Z39.50-to-SRU configurations, it ought to work with pretty much any combination of these protocols on the front- and back-ends. The software essentially combines the qualities of two existing packages, ZOOM and SimpleServer into one universal protocol gateway.

We would like to gratefully acknowledge the National Library of Australia for providing funding that enabled us to add lots of the functionality and bring this product up to a releasable standard."

A copy is attached.

As seen on oss4lib-discuss, Jeremy wrote: "We are pleased to announce the first public release of the LibraryFind metasearch software, developed by Oregon State University Libraries. LibraryFind is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This first public release, version 0.7, has a number of advanced features, such as (but not limited to): 2-click user workflow (one click to find, one click to get), an integrated OpenURL resolver, a 2-tiered caching system to improve search response time, and a customizable user interface. As this is a pre-1.0 release, there are still a number of features, functions, and efficiencies we plan to add to the software. We encourage involvement from others in the library community who are interested in working on an open source metasearch product. More information on LibraryFind, including information on how to download and run the software, can be found at libraryfind.org."

I've been working on this project, and am excited to see it out there finally. There's a lot of good stuff in there already, and I'm sure that we'll be able to improve on it rapidly with many more eyeballs on it.

A new software library is available from the MARC4J project Website (http://marc4j.tigris.org). The MARC4J Lucene API provides an easy to use and easy to configure utility for creating Lucene indexes based on MARC or MARCXML. Lucene is an open source text search engine library written in Java.

By default the library uses an index context based on the MARC to Dublin Core crosswalk, but users can create an index configuration using a simple XML format. It is also possible to store the full MARC record as binary content. A command-line utility is added to enable the creation of the Lucene index without the need to write code. The following command, for example, adds the MARC records in input.mrc to an existing Lucene index using the given index schema:

java org.marc4j.lucene.util.MarcIndexDriver -index /home/index
-schema file:///home/schema.xml input.mrc

The library can be downloaded from the Documents and files section of the MARC4J project page at http://marc4j.tigris.org. Look for a folder called marc4j-lucene. The library is published under the LGPL license.

Index Data has released version 1.01 of their SimpleServer toolkit for implementing information retrieval servers in Perl, now with support for SRW/SRU.

The built-in CQL parser makes it possible to write a single set of 'glue' routines for your backend database, and have instant support for both Z39.50, SRW, and SRU. Existing SimpleServer-based servers can implement SRW/SRU simply by upgrading to the latest version of the software and adding configuration to determine the mapping of the CQL query language.

Documentation and code is available from Index Data or CPAN.

Index Data has released a new implementation of the ZOOM abstract API for Perl.

ZOOM-Perl makes it easy to write clients for Z39.50, SRU, and SRW. It supports mapping incoming MARC records to MARCXML in UTF-8 to facilitate conversion and display, for example using some of the XSLT stylesheets made available by the LoC. Under the hood, ZOOM-Perl is based on the YAZ toolkit, and shares the reliability and interoperability of that toolkit.

Dowload and documentation available from CPAN.

Sebastian writes: "Version 1.0 of the YAZ proxy has been released. The major version jump signifies that the software is robust and has been thoroughly hardened in production. The YAZ Proxy can be used for a number of different purposes, but perhaps one of its most interesting features is that it can make any Z39.50 server look like a (SRU/SRW) webservice. If you have a Z39.50 server you'd like to access but you're intimidated by the protocol, use the proxy and you can submit queries like this
and get results back in XML. A SOAP-based protocol (SRW) is also suported. The proxy is used by the Library of Congress and other major libraries."

Katherine writes: "The Windows, GNU/Linux, and Source distributions of Greenstone v2.53 are now available for download. Important changes in this release include, in no particular order: a brand new installer; much improved GLI compatibility with Java 1.5.0; the ability to import documents exported from DSpace, and vice versa; a smarter HTMLPlug that blocks the images in the HTML files it processes, and no others; new GLI metadata sets: Qualified Dublin Core, NZGLS, AGLS, and RFC 1807; Lucene building support (for real this time!); an improved and much more bandwidth-efficient GLI applet; support for subfields in the Greenstone Editor for Metadata Sets (GEMS); and many many other improvements and bug fixes."

from fm, changes include: "SRW/SRU support. Bugfixes for event handling. C++ compile fixes (for more picky GCC). The YAZ proxy is now a separate project and is no longer part of YAZ++ ... The proxy supports SRW/SRU/Z39.50 incoming connections and any Z39.50 backend server, CQL conversions, XML, and XSLT."