The purpose of this article is to study the open source library management systems (LMSs) and to find the present development. The development and community activity is studied by examining ‘release activity’ and ‘mailing list /discussion forum activity by applying different the methodologies. Other aspects of open source library management systems such as longevity, features, license, documentation, technology used are also studied. It is found that out of 31 open source library management systems only 15 systems are currently active. Maximum active open source LMSs have institutional support. Fifty per cent of LMS project are inactive or abandoned. This study covers success and abandonment aspects of open source LMSs and provides current status open source library management systems.

Keywords:   Library management system  success  abondonment  integrated library system

Richard Stallman launched the GNU project in 1983 and published the first GNU Public Licence (GPL) in 1989. This leads foundation of free software development movement. In 1998, another group of individuals expressed problem with the term ‘free software’ and not with the concept, as the term is confusing and ambiguous and advocated the term ‘open source software’¹. However, there is difference of opinion among both groups. Some people use the term ‘Free and Open Source Software’. Development of free and open source software (FOSS) for libraries started around 1999. Some of initially developed software are Prospero, JAKE, MyLibrary, LOCKSS, Openbook, Koha, etc.²

Since then there has been continuous development in library related open source software. As ondate there are number of software developed in different area of library such as digital library, e-resource management, library management system, OPAC, federated searching, link resolves, indexing searching, etc. However, there is a question that how many projects have been succeeded and how many are abandoned. Many project become inactive just after their initial release. Vast majority of the available open source products are not useful for information technology organisation. Very small portion of them is useful however, that small portion also represents large number of products and therefore those products must be assessed for their maturity for a particular organisation³.

Extensive literature is available on the area of open source software. Schweik & English⁴ covered detailed study of factors that lead some OSS to success and other to abandonment. They also provide success/abandonment classification system⁴.

Khondhu⁵, et al. has made three categories of the projects, such as, active, dormant, and inactive, based on update activity and presents an analysis of the population of projects contained within SourceForge.net. Piggott & Amrit⁶ mentioned time-invariant and time-variant variables that can influence the success of an OSS project⁶. Rainer & Gale⁷ have done preliminary evaluation of the quality and quantity of data on open source (OS) projects, provided at the SourceForge.net porta¹⁷. Muller⁸ identified 20 open source integrated library systems and analysed these systems using three-step process, such as, licensing, community and functionality. Breeding⁹ looks open source ILS viability from four perspectives: Market acceptance, support options, product development and functionality, and risk factors⁹. Balnaves¹⁰ has evaluated seven open source library management systems (LMS) on five dimensions such as functional dimension, architecture dimension, community dimension, code dimension, and schema dimension. Boss¹¹ identified 12 integrated LMSs with some current development activity underway as early 2008. DeVoe¹² provides an overview of nine open source systems integrated library.

Boss¹³ provides criteria such as, current active development, functional feature, source code, MARC, scalability for evaluating open source software and evaluated 12 open source LMSs. Breeding¹⁴ provides detailed information about four LMS. He also provides information on trends in open source ILS adoption. Breeding¹⁵ gives up-to-date information on Koha Evergreen and learning access ILS. Breeding¹⁶ suggests that OSS should be evaluated for their own merits in features, proven reliability, support, and vision and gives details about Koha, Learning Access ILS, and Avanti Micro LCS ILS¹⁶.

The release activity shows the progress made by the developers, i.e., development activity. These activities reflect in writing or in changing the source code. Software projects release new versions after a certain period. The no. of releases and their significance (feature additions release or bug fixes release) indicate progress made by the developers. The information about release is available in release notes, project change log, etc. The open source projects have also different types of releases, such as, stable version and developmental version (‘beta’, daily builds’ or CVS)¹⁷. Release activities measured by using the release frequency and significance per releases, i.e., (a) Number of releases made per period and (b) Significance of each release17,¹⁸.

In case of open source software, the active community is very important because in most of the cases community makes testing and provides feedback. The support and community are interrelated because in most of the cases support is provided by community members. There are two types of supports—free support and paid support. The community members mostly provide free support through mailing list, discussion forum, documentation, blogs, etc., while paid support is provided by software supporting company or any other third party.

The user community of an open source project consists of the people who use the software and participate in some way. One way of participation is by filing bug reports. Another is giving feedback on functionality of project. The community defines much of the activity and reflects in other areas, such as, support, and documentation17. ‘The community activity can be measured with no. of posts per period, no. of topics, no. of users, response time, quality of post and replies, friendliness in community¹⁷.

The objectives of the present study are to:

(a) Determine project status of various available open source LMSs by studying release activity and community activity; and

(b) Study the related aspect of the system such as longevity, functionality, documentation, license, and technology used.

For this study the data about the availability of open source LMS is taken from the study of survey conducted by Londhe & Patil¹⁹. The data for release activity and community activity is collected from respective websites of the projects, available on sourceforge.net and from the websites of the projects, which have their own websites. For release activity the data like, first release, last release, number of releases and date of releases are collected. For community activity, the data like the number of posts in mailing list, forum, and dates of posts are collected. For the classification and to determine the status of LMSs projects, methodology developed by Scheweik and English⁴ is used and for further categorization of projects, a methodology developed by researchers on the basis of available literature, is used.

For the present study, only the number of releases is considered. Following formula is used for calculating release activity score:

Release activity score=(Number of releases)/(Year of last release—Year of first release)

For community scoring number of messages, posts in mailing lists and forum are taken into account. The number of messages are manually calculated, if the total numbers of counts are not available. Release activity and community activity are measured using five point scale metrics mentioned in Table 1, which is based on Business Readiness Rating model²⁰. However, figures in community metrics are modified. More than 300 messages/posts per month are set as excellent and other figures are set accordingly. These 300 figures are based on Koha mailing list. In Koha general mailing list, on an average, more than 300 messages per month are posted. Koha is the most popular open source LMS and is worldwide used by library community.

To find methodologies to categorise open source projects, literature on the topic is searched. Following some of the methodologies relevant to this topic are found.

Khondhu⁵, et al. has made three categories of the projects, such as, active, dormant, and inactive based on update activity. They define: ‘active’ project: whose activity is updated and recent; the ‘dormant’ project: whose activity is visible in the past evolution but it has stopped (due to any reason) for a defined period (e.g., one year, two years, etc.); ‘inactive’ project: which have been explicitly marked as inactive by the previous developers5. They also argue that open source software project inactivity should be evaluated on the basis of pre defining an interval time when no development activity such as commits, messages on the mailing lists or public releases have been taken place in the project.

‘The SourceForge.net maintains a system of 7 status designations. Such as Planning, Pre-Alpha, Alpha, Beta, Production/Stable, Mature and Inactive⁶.

Schweik & English⁴ identified two longitudinal stages that open source projects go through:

(i) Initiation stage—describes the period from project start to the first public release of software.

(ii) Growth stage—describe the period after a project's first public release of code.

They define, both theoretically and empirically, a method to measure whether a project is successful or abandoned in these two stages. They have identified following six categories of success and abandonment. SI: Success in Initiation; AI: Abandonment in Initiation; SG: Success in Growth; AG: Abandoned in Growth; II: Indeterminate in Initiation; IG: Indeterminate in Growth^4,21.

As per the Schweik & English methodology, the project can be placed in to six categories. However, what is status of project after ‘Success in Growth’ phase if there are no developments, i.e., further releases for longer period.

Wheeler mentions that project might stabilise over the time as it is completed but needs change, new uses are continuously created, and no program of any kind is perfect.It is important that a program is being maintained, and that it will be maintained far into the future²².

To further classify the projects, which are ‘success in growth’ phase and do not have releases and community activity for long period, following metrics are applied. In this, metrics projects having more than 5 years inactivity in release and more than two years inactivity in community are placed in category of inactive or abandoned. However, these projects have not been tagged as inactive by developers on project website and shows download activity.

The list of available 31 open source LMS along with their features is given in Table 3. Out of these 31 systems, two are e-book management systems19. The analysis of all these software gave the following results:

The release activity is scored on five-point scale, which is mentionable in Table 1. Table 3 shows that out of 31 projects, 19 projects have shown excellent release activity, which has scored to five. Seven projects show acceptable release activity, which is scored to three. Five projects release activity could not be determined because of unavailability of code files on project website and due to restriction of downloading. Out of these five, only Gnuteca and Open Amaptheque seem to be active.

Figure 1 shows release activity. Out of 19 projects, which have shown excellent release activity, three projects, such as, GPL library system, infoCID, and Java cataloguing system don’t have release for long time.

The community activity is scored on five-point scale as per Table 1. Figure 1 shows community activity of 31 projects. Out of these 31 projects, community activity score of eight projects is 3 or more and for remaining projects it is 1. The community activity score of some of the excellent release activity projects, such as, BiblioteQ, Espablio, KualiOLE, Koblikoha, librarianDB is also one. Among these active projects, Kuali OLE has recently begun and this is one of the reasons for low community activity. Other projects, such as, Espablio, Kobli koha are language specific projects and this may be the reason for low community activity. Community activity of the Firefly and Gnuteca could not be determined due to unavailability of data and problem with registration process of mailing list. In this category, Koha is having highest score. Evergreen, PMB and Calibre E book management system have occupied second position. Third position has been obtained by ABCD, NewGenLib, Openbiblio, SLiMS.

Figure 2 shows the total score of LMS projects based on release activity and community activity. The positive scale area of graph shows the score of active LMS projects. The negative scale area of graph shows the score of inactive projects. The absence of bar shows unavailability of the release and community data of LMS projects.

Among the active projects, only 7 LMS projects, such as, ABCD, Evergreen, Koha, NewGenLib, PMB, SLIMS, and Calibre book management is having more than six score. All remaining LMS projects have six or less than six score. Kuali ole and Next-L Enju are the viable candidates and both are in initial development phase, therefore community activity score of both is low and thereby low overall score.

In case of inactive projects, there is not even a single project, which has scored more than six. The score of five inactive projects could not be determined due to unavailability of data.

To find present developmental status of the LMS projects, two methodologies are used, which are mentioned in Table 1 and Table 2.

Table 4 shows the status the of project on the basis of Schweik & English methodology and Table 2 metrics.

Table 4 shows there are 20 projects, which are under the ‘success in growth’ category, and 10 projects are under the ‘abandoned in growth’ category. One project’s status could not be determined. 67% projects are success in growth (Fig. 3).

As per metrics in Table 2, Table 4 shows that out of 20 ‘success in growth projects’, there are only 13 projects, such as, ABCD, BiblioTeq, Espabiblio, Evergreen, KualiOLE, KobliKoha, Koha, , NewGenLib, Next-L Enju, Openbiblio, PMB, SLiMS, Calibre E-book Management System, which has active status in release as well as community activity. While the elibrary’s release activity is dormant and community activity is active, conversely, Librarian db’s release activity is active and community activity is dormant. As one of the activity of these 2 projects is coming under active status. Therefore, they are included in active status category.

In all as per both methodologies there are 15 projects are active and success in growth out of 31 projects and 14 projects are inactive (Fig. 4).

The status of 2 projects—OpenAmaptheque and Gnuteca (present activity), has not been determined due to the problem of download; therefore, its status has been set as unknown. This study also reveals that the score of the community activity of all inactive projects is one, which is unacceptable.

Among inactive projects, PhpMyLibrary was a good project having necessary functionality with excellent release activity. However, since 2006 there has been no further release. However, it shown considerable number (32) of weekly downloads on sourceforge.net. The project Emilda, OtomiGenx, Glibms, Java book cataloguing system have shown 9, 12, 26, and 4 weekly downloads, respectively and other 4 projects shown 1 weekly download at time of data collection. Some projects download statistics is not available.

A key indicator of software maturity is its age. Software, which is available for a long period, tends to be more mature. The longevity of the product can be assed using version number, life span of the product, and total number of downloads²³. Age can be established using the date of the first release of the software. Table 5 shows age of the project since its first release. The release history of Espabilio is not available; therefore, among the available versions on project website, the oldest version is considered. Out of 16 projects, 11 have more than 6 years longevity. Koha is the one of oldest softwares and has more than 15 years’ longevity. Gnuteca, OpenBiblio and PMB also have more than 10 years of longevity. Among the inactive projects, only Avanti MicroLCS and PhpMyLibrary continued for more than four years.All other remaining projects discontinued within a very short span.

Functionality is an important aspect of any kind of software. Table 6 shows the availability of basic main modules, such as, acquisition, cataloguing, circulation, serial, OPAC of active projects. Out of 16 LMS, Nine systems have all five basic modules. Two systems are specially developed for e-book management. BiblioteQ have catalogue, circulation, OPAC but circulation module has very limited functionality and OPAC modules are separately available, needs to be integrated with desktop version. Acquisition and serial modules are absent in Espabiblio and Openbilio but Espabiblio has CMS and digital files attachment functionality. Librariandb has only catalogue and OPAC modules. In SLiMS, acquisition module is not available but provision to add basic acquisition data with record. It shows that some systems tried to incorporate the new generation library management system features but they are at very preliminary level except Kuali OLE.

It has become apparent that maximum number of library management systems are released under GNU GPL. Some systems are an exception, such as, ABCD, Open Marco Polo, and Java cataloguing system. These systems are released under LGPL. BiblioteQ is released under BSD license. Gnuteca is released under CC-GNU GPL. Kuali OLE is released under Education community license, but now under AGPL. Next-L Enju are released under MIT license. PMB was initially released under GNU GPL; now it is released under CECILL. Some software reuses several other libraries and modules, these libraries and modules retain their original licenses

The LMS such as, ABCD, Evergreen, Koha, Kuali Ole, NewGenLib, Next-L, Enju, SLiMS provide comprehensive documentation on different aspects of the software.

Table 7 reveals that all active LMSs have MARC and Z39.50 functionality. MySQL is the favourite database management system among the developers and PHP is a preferred programming language.

This study covers historical overview of development and current status of LMS library management systems. Apart from community and release activity, other technical information about LMS systems, such as, functionality, longevity, documentation, license, technology used is also examined. 31 open source LMS projects, which are developed during 1999 to 2014. However, only 50 % projects are active today. Most of the projects became inactive or abandoned within short period after their initial release and mostly in growth phase. Most of abandoned projects having 2 or 3 release in less than 6 months after their initiation.This study reveals that maximum number of active projects is having an institutional support. Among active projects, only 7 LMS projects such as ABCD, Evergreen, Koha, NewGenLib, PMB, SLims, and Calibre book management performed well as per combined score of the release and community activity. However, Kuali Ole and Next-L Enju are viable candidates and have evolving community.

This study reveals that there are considerable number of weekly downloads for old releases of some inactive projects.

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Mr Nagesh L. Londhe is working as Assistant Librarian in Jayakar Library, Savitribai Phule Pune University (Formally University of Pune). He has 17 years experience in LIS field. He has completed MLIS and MCM and presently, pursuing the PhD in Library and Information Science. His areas of interest include: Digital libraries, digitisation, open source digital library software, and open source library management systems.

Mr Dr Suresk K. Patil is retired Professor and Librarian of Savitribai Phule Pune University (Former) and is presently, working as Professor and Librarian at Symbiosis International University, Pune. He has guided 21 PhD students andhas contributed more than 43 research paper. His areas of interest include: Library management and ICT.