JMU - Accepting bids on ILS

[Dan Funk]

We came across an RFP for an Integrated Library System proposal at nearby James Madison University.  I'd love to get them on Blacklight, and I'd like to propose using other open source projects to make up the rest of their ILS requirements (circulation, acquisitions, financials, ILL)

I know and trust the Blacklight community, so I wanted to come here first and see if you had any recommendations for OSS that will integrate well with Blacklight and fill the gaps in a basic ILS system.
 

Yours Faithfully,

Dan

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Daniel Funk
Principal, Software Engineer | LightCastle Technical Consulting
(540) 457-0024 | d...@lightcastletech.com

[Tom Cramer]

Dan,

The only three OSS ILS's that I'm aware of are: 

- Koha

- Evergreen

- Kuali OLE (still in dev)

Getting MARC records to export and index should (I suspect) be relatively straightforward from all three, so the areas of differentiation may be on how well they present API's for things like getting real time availability information, the ability to request an item or put it on hold, and the ability to present a "My Account" view of patron data via a RoR front end. Alas, I can't comment on any of the three's ability to do this, nor do I know anyone in the BL community whose done it (though perhaps this thread will unearth some). 

Hope this helps. Good luck! Sounds like a great prospect, 

- Tom

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[Mark Thomas]

You may want to check out Hydra (http://www.projecthydra.org/), which includes an ILS (Fedora Commons) integrated with Blacklight.

[Tom Cramer]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the pointer to Hydra, which does indeed include both Fedora and Blacklight. Just to be clear, though, I'd say that Fedora isn't really an ILS, but rather a digital repository for managing, preserving and providing access to digital objects. I believe Dan was inquiring about ILS's (integrated library management systems), for driving a library's operations (acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, etc.).

Cheers, 

- Tom

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks for the clarification. It does appear that Hydra goes a step further than Blacklight alone, though, and can be integrated with an ILS. There are a few institutions that have done this.