Introduction
LibData is a library oriented web based application which provides authoring environments for subject pathfinders (Research QuickStart), course related pages (CourseLib) and general purpose web pages (PageScribe). LibData encompasses all of these applications, but a typical installation need only take advantage of one or two of them -- great local variation and emphasis is possible. This page template, and the LibData open source philosophy, borrows from the GNU Project.
LibData was built with open source components (Apache, mySQL, and PHP) and moved into production at the University of Minnesota for Fall Semester 2003. Our production instance at the University of Minnesota uses a different security mechanism (campus-wide x500), and has some additional development work for enterprise portal connectivity. Having and controlling easily-understood source code greatly enables productive localized integration.The project is approximately 30,000+ lines of programming code, strongly function based (with objects used for authentication), and is well documented internally. It was written in a fairly simple and consistent style which should be easily understood by Perl/c programmers wishing to make further contributions or customization. LibData is best approached as an application delivered over the web, rather than as a series of web pages with database components.
Download
LibData has been released open source on SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/libdata/) under the GPL license terms. So feel free to customize and build on this work, but you may not sell it or re-release it in any closed fashion. We encourage institutions deciding to use LibData to acknowledge our work with something like Built with LibData, Powered by LibData, and a link to http://www.lib.umn.edu/digilab/.
Installation is performed with a simple Perl script, and additional steps are documented. It is possible to run LibData on a desktop-class PC running linux (tested on Red Hat), probably on a Mac running OS X (not yet tested) upwards to an enterprise Sun Solaris server. Note that the current install scripts work against mySQL 3.x and will need minor tweaking for mySQL 4.x. (Namely the create.sql script, which handles the insertion of two mySQL users required for LibData, will need minor adjustment as detailed in the libdata_install.txt document.)
Supplied with the distribution are README files for separate audiences: server administrators, web designers, and a general staff audience.
Demo Accounts
We can grant demonstration accounts on the Demo Instance below to interested institutions. Note that we occasionally refresh the demo installation. Though your demo account will be preserved, your work may be lost -- so it's purely a demonstration/experimentation environment. Please send e-mail to the contact below for details on obtaining a demo account.
- LibData Demo Instance (Tip: Try User RQS or User CourseLib for generic public views of a highly populated LibData instance. Administrative demo accounts can be granted to interested institutions.)
Other Resources
Introduction
Download
Documentaton Screenshots
Demo Accounts
Other Resources