Free and Open Source Software for librarians and libraries

Abstract

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is a national priority in South Africa, and is increasingly recognized as a means to achieve quality, lower costs, create agility and foster innovation. All of these are things libraries need to accomplish, so a survey of the FOSS tools available to support library functions or the role of librarians is provided. There are FOSS tools to support nearly everything that happens in a Library, from personal productivity to library information management. Many of them have versions that run on proprietary operating systems or are web based and so cross platform by nature, making them easy to experiment with even on proprietary operating systems. This paper provides a brief overview of some of the FOSS tools that are available to libraries.

Innovation Vol. 36 2008: pp. 1-16