{"id":2629,"date":"2010-08-03T13:10:48","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T20:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nnlm.gov\/pnr\/dragonfly\/?p=2629"},"modified":"2026-01-27T16:18:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T16:18:23","slug":"opensource","status":"archive","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/opensource\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Kittens! Who&#8217;s Using Open Source?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6><a href=\"\/pnr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2010\/08\/kittens.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2631\" title=\"kittens\" src=\"\/pnr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2010\/08\/kittens.jpg\" alt=\"woman holding two black and grey kittens\" width=\"240\" height=\"198\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a><strong><a title=\"Kitten goggles\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/fiatlux\/33486074\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kitten Goggles!<\/a> by fiatlux on flickr<\/strong><\/h6>\n<p><a title=\"open source definition\" href=\"http:\/\/opensource.org\/docs\/osd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Open source<\/a> software is often described as being free as in free kittens, not free lunch. Sure, you can use it, enjoy it, and even customize it without paying a cent, but who\u2019s going to maintain it? Do you have someone with the systems knowledge and programming skills to really make it work for you?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Librarian and open source advocate Nicole Engard recently shared two very useful slide presentations. The <a title=\"Open Source for Libraries part 1\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/nengard\/practical-open-source-software-for-libraries-part-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">first presentation<\/a> addresses some common questions about open source, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Concerns about quality, security, and support<\/li>\n<li>The role of the developer community in quality control and innovation<\/li>\n<li>How open source software is being used by businesses and libraries<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The <a title=\"Open Source for Libraries, part 2\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/nengard\/practical-open-source-software-for-libraries-part-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">second presentation<\/a>, embedded below, gives 54 examples of open source software products: web authoring tools, media players, room schedulers, citation managers, library catalogs, digital repositories, and much more. Take a look and discover something new.<\/p>\n<div id=\"__ss_4884220\" style=\"width: 425px\"><\/div>\n<p>At NN\/LM PNR, we take advantage of a number of open source products. The blog you\u2019re reading now runs on the <a title=\"wordpress.org\" href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.org\/\">WordPress<\/a> platform. We use <a title=\"moodle\" href=\"http:\/\/moodle.org\/\">Moodle<\/a> when we teach online classes. Our internal web pages are built using <a title=\"mediawiki\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/MediaWiki\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">MediaWiki<\/a>. If you\u2019ve taken our class about podcasting, you learned how to use <a title=\"Audacity\" href=\"http:\/\/audacity.sourceforge.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Audacity<\/a> to record and edit audio. Last year, we wrote about the UW Health Sciences Library\u2019s use of <a title=\"DimDim\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dimdim.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">DimDim<\/a> for remote reference consultations. Last\u00a0April, we hosted an online presentation by Lorena O\u2019English about <a title=\"zotero\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zotero.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Zotero<\/a>, an open source bibliographic citation manager.<\/p>\n<p>How are you using open source software in your organizations? Please share in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kitten Goggles! by fiatlux on flickr Open source software is often described as being free as in free kittens, not free lunch. Sure, you can use it, enjoy it, and even customize it without paying a cent, but who\u2019s going to maintain it? Do you have someone with the systems knowledge and programming skills to&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/opensource\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2629","post","type-post","status-archive","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17546,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2629\/revisions\/17546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}