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This paper sets out to provide an overview of the open source online public access catalog (OPAC) software known as Blacklight. It includes a discussion of the reasons why the University of Virginia decided to create the Blacklight project, rationale behind design decisions, an overview of the technologies used, and some examples of interface designs and object behaviors.

Design approaches discussed include open source methodologies, model/view/controller development patterns, and strategies for efficient staff training and utilization.

The Blacklight project is not yet complete, but initial usability testing is favorable. The project shows particular promise among previously underserved populations such as music researchers, and for previously under‐used collections.

Libraries who are considering de‐coupling their OPAC from their Integrated Library System will find useful information about this process as undertaken by the University of Virginia, as well as more information about Blacklight, and more information about whether Blacklight might be a good fit for their library.

Blacklight is an open source OPAC system that is particularly well suited to large libraries with diverse collections. It is the only open source OPAC system with a focus on creating customized interfaces for specific populations.

This paper aims to examine how an open-source information management system was developed to manage a collection of more than 10,000 oral history interviews at the University of Kentucky Libraries’ Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History.

Digital library architects at the University of Kentucky Libraries built an open-source information management system for oral history using the open-source tools Omeka and Blacklight. Additional open-source code was developed to facilitate interaction between these tools.

Information management systems that address needs of libraries and archives can be built by combining existing open-source tools in complementary ways.

This work at the University of Kentucky Libraries serves as a proof of concept for other institutions to examine as a potential model to follow or adapt for their own local needs. The SPOKEdb framework can be replicated elsewhere, as the major and minor components are open-source. SPOKEdb at its conceptual level is a unique information management system based on its tailored approach to serving the needs of oral history management at various user levels including both administrative and public.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and compare open source and proprietary discovery tools and find out how much discovery tools have achieved towards becoming the next generation catalog.

The paper summarizes characteristics of the next generation catalog into a check‐list of 12 features. This list was checked against each of seven open source and ten proprietary discovery tools to determine if those features were present or absent in those tools.

Discovery tools have many next generation catalog features, but only a few can be called real next generation catalogs. Federated searching and relevancy based on circulation statistics are the two areas that both open source and proprietary discovery tools are missing. Open source discovery tools seem to be bolder and more innovative than proprietary tools in embracing advanced features of the next generation catalog. Vendors of discovery tools may need to quicken their steps in catching up.

It is the first evaluation and comparison of open source and proprietary discovery tools on a large scale. It will provide information as to exactly where discovery tools stand in light of the much desired next generation catalog.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how young people engage in social justice work. This study is guided by the following question: how do students engage in the social justice work of storytelling through art?

The title stems from a conversation the researcher had with the four female students about whether they identified themselves as activists. After the students collectively agreed that they did not align with the term “activist”, they continued to grapple with definitions of the word and discussed other terms to describe themselves. The conversation is one of many that emerged from a three-year qualitative research project that focused on youth activism, which included a one-year critical narrative inquiry into a ninth-grade Humanities classroom.

This paper positions the artwork as activism, in that the girls embedded multiple narratives into their art to portray a complex narrative about the realities of sex trafficking in their community.

The paper will conclude with implications that focus on the importance of blurring the boundaries between classrooms and communities, cultivating spaces for young people to develop an activist stance and working alongside youth as they compose political–personal stories about injustice, inequality and inequities in their fights for social change.

This paper offers a unique discussion of artmaking (collective biography) as a form of socially just youth literacy. As such, interstitial literacies become the acts of speaking, reading, writing and being that youth/students create and engage in as they move between classrooms and communities.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how malware can harm the library's computers, and how technology can be used to protect them, in a way that can be understood by the non‐technical.

The searches encompassed articles and books on the issues of malware and technology‐based code organisms.

There were complex issues dealing with hackers and other malevolent and unscrupulous characters trying to break into computer systems for profit.

Only small indicators of the overall problem have been addressed. Much more has to be investigated and learned.

It is advisable to learn to protect your computers more effectively when “online.”

Although much has been written about the problem, few articles offer concrete solutions to the problems.

The purpose of this paper is to describe criteria for selecting and processes for implementing a self‐service online resource reservation using the University of Virginia (U.Va.) Library as a case study.

The paper chronicles the identified needs, selection criteria, and deployment strategy undertaken by a U.Va. Library task force in early to mid‐2010 along with the unexpected pitfalls and policy implications uncovered by the process.

The U.Va. Library selected and rolled out a product meeting a variety of public service needs, EMS Enterprise, in the summer/fall of 2010, with lessons learned about the intricacies of IT infrastructure, public service policies and procedures, and the varied resource reservation needs of the library's libraries and labs.

The paper demonstrates how the addition of a self‐scheduling reservation system has helped fill a long‐awaited need and adds value to the U.Va. Library's Services.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the emergence of resource discovery systems and services along with their advantages and best practices including current landscapes. It reports the development of a resource discovery system by using the “VuFind” software and describes other technological tools, software, standards and protocols required for the development of the prototype.

This paper describes the process of integrating VuFind (resource discovery tool) with Koha (integrated library system), DSpace (repository software) and Apache Tika (as full-text extractor for full-text searching), etc.

The proposed model performs like other existing commercial and open source Web-scale resource discovery systems and is capable of harvesting resources from different subscribed or external sources replacing a library’s OPAC.

This discovery system is an important add-on to designing a one-stop access in place of the existing retrieval silos in libraries. This system is capable of indexing a variety of content within and beyond library collections. This work may help library professionals and administrators in designing their discovery system, as well as vendors to improve their products, to provide different library-friendly services.

In recent years, aceted search has been a well-accepted approach for many academic libraries across the United States. This chapter is based on the author’s dissertation and work of many years on faceted library catalogs. Not to hope to be exhaustive, the author’s aim is to provide sufficient depth and breadth to offer a useful resource to researchers, librarians, and practitioners about faceted search used in library catalogs.

The chapter reviews different aspects of faceted search used in academic libraries, from the theory, the history, to the implementation. It starts with the history of online public access catalogs (OPACs) and how people search with OPACs. Then it introduces the classic facet theory and its relationship with faceted search. At last, various academic research projects on faceted search, especially faceted library catalogs, are briefly reviewed. These projects include both implementation studies and the evaluation studies.

The results indicate that most searchers were able to understand the concept of facets naturally and easily. Compared to text searches, however, faceted searches were complementary and supplemental, and used only by a small group of searchers.

The author hopes that the facet feature has not only been cosmetic but the answer to the call for the next generation catalog for academic libraries. The results of this research are intended to inform librarians and library information technology (IT) staff to improve the effectiveness of the catalogs to help people find information they need more efficiently.