Library news: a place to discuss the latest from the library world

Library news is a relatively new website based on the popular technology site, Hacker News (and using the same Open Source software; it’s like Hacker News but blue). It’s a place that you can post and discuss news stories, blogs and other websites of interest to the library world.

Library News was developed by the Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory. Like Hacker News (and Reddit, Digg etc), there’s an element of gamification. You can vote for the submitted stories or comments that you find interesting and others can vote for your submissions and comments. Popular stories float to the top and upvotes for your contributions will give you more karma points.

It’s early days yet in terms of discussion on the site but there’s a steady flow of submissions and it would be great to see this turn into a lively library community – don’t be afraid to comment as well as post.

About the Koha decision, open source and trademarks

Some rights reserved by verbeeldingskr8 on Flickr

You may have seen the tweets or emails circulating asking for help for the Horowhenua Library Trust as they fight to keep the right to use the name ‘Koha’ for the library system they developed and have worked on for the past 12 years. Koha is a Te Reo Maori word which you can read more about on Wikipedia. PTFS/Liblime applied for a Trademark on Koha in New Zealand and this application has now been approved by the Maori Advisory Board.

You can read some of the background discussions between PTFS and the Horowhenua Library Trust Koha Subcommittee attempting to avoid this current situation in the HLT Koha Committee report.

The last few years has seen various disputes between Liblime (and now PTFS/Liblime) and the Koha community. There’s a really succinct summary of these on LWN.net but at the heart of this latest development is the fact that the organisation that developed (with Katipo Communications) and shared the Koha library management system under an open licence is at risk of no longer being able to use the name they gave it. And, for an example about how trademarks *could* be managed for open source projects, last year’s announcement about the transfer of the WordPress trademark to the non-profit WordPress Foundation provides a welcome counterexample. Eric Hellman also wrote an article about the GPL open source software licence and software trademarking that sums up some of the main issues back when Liblime was first acquired by PTFS.

HLT are seeking help to challenge this latest decision, which you can read more about on the Library Matters blog.

Would you like a free pass to the EDGE2012 conference? Edinburgh, March 2012

MMIT Group has one free pass to give away to a group member. Simply email MmIT journal editor catherine.dhanjal@theansweruk.com by 31 January stating why you’d like to attend. http://edgeconference.co.uk AND journal readers & Group member can also use our special discount code to book a place

MmIT journal November issue now available

The November issue of the Group journal is now available online.

To log in with your normal Cilip website user name and password, visit: http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/multimedia/journal/pages/journalcurrentissue.aspx. If you need a reminder of your Cilip password/user name, contact Cilip or catherine.dhanjal@theansweruk.com

This issue covers news, book and product reviews, tech-round up plus features.

Our special feature focus on ‘open’ includes articles on open source library management systems; open source referencing tool Mendeley; open access institutional repositories; and open linked data for archives and libraries.

Other features cover image processing; confusing council websites; report from Umbrella 2011 conference; a new code for cloud computing; and a preview of EDGE2012 conference in Edinburgh (plus discount code and the chance to win a free place!).
For an upcoming issue we are planning a retrospective/futuristic theme, looking at how technology developments in libraries, education and the arts have evolved over the last decades. If you feel inspired to write an article for us on this theme, please contact the editor, catherine.dhanjal@theansweruk.com.