[Web4lib] Open-source ERMS?

[Yitzchak Schaffer]

Greetings --

We are finally working on putting together a proper ERMS.  Our internal 
structure is consortium-like, with member institutions able to buy into 
our resources; so although we are a Serials Solutions client, it seems 
their system is not capable of handling this.  I know from experience 
that we've had to stretch the custom-name fields in the user display to 
indicate which members have access to which resources.

We are following the DLF ERM report closely, at least in designing the 
database, which is where we're at now.  My questions: firstly, are there 
any other such projects going on out there?  I've looked at the HERMES 
webpage [http://hermes.mse.jhu.edu:8008/hermesdocs/] which was helpful, 
but it seems that they stopped releasing code with 0.1 who knows how 
long ago.  The DLF report itself refers to that project.  My 
pokings-around haven't yielded any recent open-source/other homegrown 
projects informed by their initiative.

Secondly: would anyone out there be potentially interested in using our 
ERMS if we would end up releasing it as open-source?  (FreERMS[tm]?)  Up 
until now we have been steering towards a implementation-specific 
database design, omitting parts of the DLF report prototype, but if 
others are interested, perhaps it makes sense to extend it to include 
other elements.

Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.  Thanks!
-- 
Yitzchak Schaffer
Systems Librarian
Touro College Libraries
33 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10010
Tel (212) 463-0400 x230
Fax (212) 627-3197
yitzchas at touro.edu