I'd like to introduce my latest project, LibDB: An open-sourced Perl/MySQL library and asset management system based on and inspired by the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, triples from the semantic web, and "the end-user doesn't, and shouldn't, need to know this stuff". In English, this means that you'll be able to smartly and easily catalog your movies, books, magazines, comics, etc. into your own computerized "personal library".
http://www.disobey.com/noos/LibDB/ This has been a dream project for quite a while, something that I've always wanted for my own rather large collection of "stuff". I needed the "perfect" system, as it were, because I didn't want to end up cataloguing everything twice, or having to write conversion scripts from one failed undertaking to another. And so, a few months back, I gave myself 180 days to research the "proper" way of cataloguing media, delving headfirst into librarian technologies. That six months of planned research was cut abruptly short by a sudden need for results, and thus, LibDB was quickly born. Three weeks ago, it didn't exist. Now, there's a strong set of Project Goals, a Database Schema with sample data, a planned File Structure, and I'm beginning to work on the installation code so that, from the very beginning, things are drop-dead simple to get going. http://www.disobey.com/noos/LibDB/?ProjectGoals http://www.disobey.com/noos/LibDB/?DatabaseSchema http://www.disobey.com/noos/LibDB/?FileStructure "Drop-dead simple" ("drop-dread simple", as I like to call the projects that purport ease of use, but fail miserably) will mean different things to different people, and I've focused the development on three user profiles: casual, discriminating, and expert, which you can read more about in the Project Goals. LibDB is based around the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, a relatively new (1997) whitepaper in the librarian world that many have heralded as the next big thing in cataloguing. Art Rhyno, author of Using Open Source Systems for Digital Libraries and head librarian at the University of Windsor called his initial peek at LibDB "really impressive", and that I'm "the only developer working on FRBR from a practical systems perspective right now". LibDB, as all of my projects, is designed from the very beginning for extensibility: users will be able to add their own locations ("where is this item stored?"), their own identifiers ("my local naming scheme is MORBUS1231"), and their own annotations (name/value pairs like "Review: 3 stars", "Death By: Axe to Head", etc.). Likewise, it'll allow granularity in how much you actually want to catalog: if you want to keep track of who catered a movie or who bound a book, have a blast. If you want to show all the comic books you have that contained the character "Sherlock Holmes" and touched on the concept of "murder", you can do that too. They'll be a number of pre-built identifiers (UPC, ASIN, IMDb, ISBN, etc.), roles (Director, Writer, Special Effects, etc.), and annotations (Chapters, Review, Summary, etc.) as well. LibDB is still very early in its development (not a bit of code has been written, only data modeling and similar preparation) so you've got the welcome ability to influence the future of the cataloguing program "you've always wanted". And yes, it'll be free, yes, it'll allow sharing of data (in varying forms: MARC, RDF, and MODS are initially planned), and yes, they'll be permaURLs and RESTian architecture. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, that's quite all right too: you don't need to, and that's a feature. -- Morbus Iff ( i subscribe to the theory of intellectual osmosis ) Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779 Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/ icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus
