We encourage folks to test this release and report any bugs or issues at http://code.google.com/p/bibapp/issues/list. You can also see there any unresolved bugs and enhancement requests.

If you’re interested in updates or would like to ask questions of a wider group, we encourage use to join the BibApp Google group (see http://groups.google.com/group/bibapp).

Pending testing, we are planning to release 1.0 of BibApp in mid-March and will be updating documentation and the roadmap over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!

The BibApp team has been a bit depleted with some staffing changes and leaves, but we are still actively working through bug fixes since our first  release candidate in September 2009. Since October 1, 2009 we have committed approximately 40 bug fixes and are well on our way to a second release candidate in early February. We have an active group experimenting with BibApp (see the comments in our Google Group - http://groups.google.com/group/bibapp) and have a pilot of BibApp up at the University of Illinois at http://connections.ideals.illinois.edu.

Please join in the Google Group if you have questions or comments. We welcome all participants!

Although we’d never go as far as to say BibApp alone  is the answer to all these problems, we appreciate being named as one of the services helping to define the future of repositories.   One of our goals is to provide easier (and hopefully more useful) ways for researchers to discover and interact with their local repository (and each other).   We’re hoping that the upcoming BibApp 1.0 release will be a step in the right direction.

Thanks again for the confidence, Alma!

Tim Donohue wins OR2009 Developer Challenge

Congratulations to BibApp developer Tim Donohue for winning the Open Repositories 2009 Developer Challenge.

Tim’s entry, “Mention It (video)“, is a simple javascript library to aggregate “mentions” of content held within an institutional repository (or personal blog) from across the web.  The Mention-It code is available on Google Code.  Full details (and video) on the award are forthcoming on the JISC Dev8D blog.

The RepoChallenge is presented by the Open Repositories committee in cooperation with the UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Microsoft.  Tim’s prize is an all expenses paid trip ($2,000) to attend _another_ developer conference.

The challenge victory is just one example of Tim’s unparalleled commitment and vision to shaping the future of IRs.  We’re happy to have such a great talent on board the BibApp.

See video of the exciting award announcement.

Congrats Tim!
-The BibApp Team

The University of Illinois has recently hired Bill as a dedicated programmer for the BibApp project for the next year and a half.   Bill comes to us from the UIUC NDIIPP project, where he’s one of the primary developers of their Hub and Spoke Framework for digital repositories.  Bill was also one of the main developers on the Mellon-funded project exploring the use of OAI-ORE resource maps for scholarly annotation.  We’re all excited to have Bill on board, and we know his addition will provide great advancement to the project!

Funding for Bill’s position comes from three main sources:

1. Illinois Informatics Institute (I3) - 60%
2. UIUC Library - IDEALS - 20% (until Summer ‘09, 40% thereafter)
3. UIUC NDIIPP Project - 20% (until Summer ‘09)

The position was sparked by John Unsworth’s recent appointment as Director of I3. John is also the Dean of the UIUC Graduate School of Library and Information Science and has previously written about the BibApp in his chapter, “University 2.0“, of the new EDUCAUSE e-book: The Tower and The Cloud.

A big thanks to I3 and John Unsworth in their support of the BibApp!   Look for Bill to become more active in the coming weeks, once he gets his feet wet.

Watch this space! BibApp developers are working on some exciting potential collaborations. If you heard about the BibApp at SPARC-DR and are interested in talking to us, comment here or drop one of us an email.

Unsworth describes the BibApp as a “flexible and innovative information service”, which helps to “seam” together university data in a new way. Ultimately, he concludes it is the re-imagination of currently accessible data that will lead to exciting new University 2.0 applications: “What we need more than big science or big servers are good ideas about interesting things that faculty, staff, and students could do with the information produced in, by, and about universities”.

We here at the BibApp definitely agree. Thanks for the write up!

BibApp developer Tim Donohue of Illinois will be attending the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2008 in Baltimore on November 17 and 18, as will planners Sarah Shreeves of Illinois and Dorothea Salo of Wisconsin. If you will be there, please stop any of us for a chat or a quick demo—and keep your eye out for BibApp stickers!

We are looking for early adopters and additional developers. If you might be one, please let us know!