Web-based Catalogues

[Sunner]

Hi all,

I'm writing to ask for help yet again.

I'm looking for a low-cost (not necessarily free, though the 2 below are)
alternative for loading our catalogue onto the internet.  Commercial vendors
such as Inmagic (which we use for our inhouse database) have priced their
web versions out of the small library market (at least in Australian
dollar$).

I just recently came across Koha (http://www.koha.org/) an open source
library system developed at the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand. I
have sampled their intranet version (http://hlt.katipo.co.nz/) and it looks
quite interesting.

I also found WODA (http://itc.fgg.uni-lj.si/woda/), a web oriented database
developed by an academic in Slovenia.  This also looks good (sample
database: http://itc.fgg.uni-lj.si/cumincad/)  but requires either a good
knowledge of Perl or access to someone who has the gift.

I was wondering if any of you have had experience with either of these, or
know of something else on the market.

We did have a purpose-written script that converted our database records
into individual html pages that were searched simply via a Glimpse
search-engine. Items could be requested using a cgi form.  Clumsy - but it
worked, and our union branches around Australia were happy. Unfortunately
the whole thing fell over (irretrievably) after working wonderfully for two
years. I would rather not go down that path again.

Any ideas or comments would be greatly appreciated.

(Please excuse if my terminology seems awkward - I seem to be stuck half way
up a steep learning curve!)

Many thanks.

Kati
"Information isn't power.  Who's got the most information in your
neighborhood?  Librarians, and they're famous for having no power at all.
Who has the most power in your community?  Politicians, of course.  And
they're notorious for being ill-informed."
High Tech Heretic
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Kati Sunner

Federation of Education Unions Information Centre
120 Clarendon St. Southbank Victoria 3006 Australia
Telephone: +61 3 9254 1800 Fax: +61 3 9254 1805
Web site: http://www.feuic.org.au
E-mail: katis at feuic.org.au

Alternate e-mail: sunner at bigpond.net.au
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