RE:Tools and more on ALA

["Belton, Keith" <kbelton@solinet.net>]

Matthew Beacom wrote:

 >Tools for non-programmers to use to work with metadata in XML would be a
great set of projects. 
 >

I second this, as well as tools for "quasi" programmers like myself (who
know just enough to get in trouble). I would be happy work with anyone on
evaluating and putting together in a systematic way sets of tools that are
useful to a wide group of people. I have the beginnings of such a project
that I would like to publish as a web site as soon as I get time to make it
presentable. My own interests are complete DL packages (like Greenstone),
tools for XML/object publishing like Zope and Cocoon, Z39.50 stuff, and
Python (see "knows enough to get in trouble", above).

I think that to build on the obvious momentum of the ALA presentations -
great work, Dan, Jeremy, Peter, David - if we could say, "here is a set of
open source tools that your library can use to publish your local digital
collections" there would be a tremendous rush of support for open source in
library land. A lot of pent-up demand out there. There are a lot of smaller
libraries with a minimal level of skills ( "I know how to type 'make'") that
would appreciate a generic set of tools to get them up and visible. IS this
a reasonable goal? Any ideas?

IMHO the ALA presentations were a watershed even, given the number of people
there and their level of interest.

Keith

--
Keith Belton, Ph.D., AICP  . . . . . . . SOLINET
Manager . . . . . . . . Digital Library Services
Tel: (800) 999-8558 . . . . Fax:  (404) 892-7879
keith_belton@solinet.net . . . . www.solinet.net

Keith Belton (E-mail).vcf