(Interface photo originally uploaded by Scriblio)
One of the things I missed most about working in corporate environments is that it was hard to keep up with the cool things many libraries are doing with open source software. Tonight over dinner, I found out about Scriblio, a library catalog and content management system that uses WordPress. With Scriblio, you can import MARC records from any MARC-capable system, and you can also import catalog records from any Innovative Interfaces library catalog. This matters because libraries — those bulwarks of intellectual freedom — typically use systems that are based on proprietary software. This locked-in software means that librarians can’t make (many) modifications to their catalogs that better serve their communities themselves; rather, they have to depend on the catalog vendor to make modifications (many of which are expensive modifications, or in the case of some vendors, are only made begrudgingly).
Scriblio may not take the place of your neighborhood library catalog, which is OK because it isn’t really meant to. Rather, it provides librarians with an easy to maintain system that anyone with a basic understanding of how to install and configure WordPress is free to customize the system to fit their needs. Pretty cool stuff, that.
Libraries that currently use Scriblio:
The developers have also created an installation screencast that covers installation, configuration, importing records, and browsing. The geek in me loves that they used Subversion to install WordPress.
