Question of the day: What to use to catalog a small church library?

So, the question of the day was about how to catalog a church's library.

This article has some great suggestions especially in regards to collection management decision making.

In addition to determining which audience level, type of media, and subject headings schema to use (Sears, LCSH, etc.), I would add to also figure out how you want to provide access to the catalog and what you want to use it for. Do you want a system where you can also circulate items? Can you host it on your server or does it need to be hosted elsewhere?

Hosted elsewhere solutions
LibraryThing.org: many small libraries have used librarything to catalog their items; Community contributed records but no checkin/checkout functionality

Hosted on your server (software)
Opensource. Features include membership creation, assigning/printing barcodes, an online user-searchable cataloge, run circulation tasks, etc.
Koha, http://www.koha.org.
Evergreen, http://open-ils.org/

Biblios.net, http://biblios.net/ Biblios.net has a webbased cataloging client and allows for sharing of records, although you'd need a database to then put your work back into.

Lots of choices at this website.

Skyriver vs. OCLC

Lots of resources related to the recent lawsuit against OCLC including recent articles, blog postings, procedural court docs. http://bit.ly/cANjSe (from my twitter stream)

"The suit alleges that OCLC, a purported non-profit with a membership of 72,000 libraries worldwide, is unlawfully monopolizing the markets for cataloging services, interlibrary lending, and bibliographic data, and attempting to monopolize the market for integrated library systems, by anticompetitive and exclusionary practices."

You can read OCLC's statement here

..and here is the Library Journal article
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Stay tuned.

Open Library project update

The final report of the Open Library Environment project is available for reading. ♥ this project with its focus on the behind the scenes... because if the behind the scenes (processing system/database/data) doesn't work very well, the public interface is not going to work very well. I am definitely keeping an eye on this project and I hope to be able to contribute in some way in the future.

A few points of interest (amongst many....)

• The project planners chose to define a system that supports libraries as a central player in the research process.
• Libraries need to be able to leverage a dynamic information environment to support the research and educational mission of their institutions.
• Libraries must respond to the dynamic information environment by re-engineering its organization and the workflows carried out by its personnel.
  

I don't know if these statements are Yays or DUHs, because they seem so obvious, yet some do not grasp that simple reality of library catalog software and library information silos such as databases, websites, etc.

And then the key features:

• Flexibility
• Community ownership
• Service Orientation
• Enterprise-Level Integration
• Efficiency
• Sustainability
  

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Reposting:
The Open Library Environment (OLE) Project has posted a draft of its final report. We are excited to offer this report publicly to the community and welcome your comments. As a community-source project, your input is vital to the future and success of the OLE Project. You can access the report at this address:
http://oleproject.org/final-ole-project-report/

About the Open Library Environment Project:
With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a multinational group of libraries is developing the design for an Open Library Environment (OLE), an alternative to the current model of an Integrated Library System. The goal is to produce a design document to inform open source library system development efforts, to guide future library system
implementations, and to influence current Integrated Library System vendor products.

Build the Open Shelves Classification

Build the Open Shelves Classification

Description: I hereby invite you to join the Open Shelves Classification (OSC), a free, "humble," modern, open-source, crowd-sourced replacement for the Dewey Decimal System.

---from LibraryThing.

You can follow its progress or contribute to its effort here