LIBRARY A LA CARTE: OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE FOR LIBRARY RESEARCH GUIDES

The core mission of university libraries is to provide access to books, journals, data and primary sources to enhance and enable research and education. Because students are accustomed to gathering information using commercial search engines, they can overlook high-quality library resources. To connect with student researchers when they need library resources, many libraries have built online research guides tied to specific subjects and courses. These guides can address specific assignments where research is required, and course instructors can point students to the guides to assist them in completing their research assignments successfully. In 2006, Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries developed an open source software product called Library a la Carte that librarians can use to construct research guides easily and quickly. The code was made available to other libraries, and a number of institutions have adopted the tool. A successful user community has grown up around Library a la Carte, but development up to this point has been the sole responsibility of OSU Libraries. We are now embarking on building a robust developer community, to contribute code, to build additional features and to take Library a la Carte into the future. As part of our plan to move forward, we are testing a hosted (cloud-based) version of the software. This paper introduces Library a la Carte, presents what was learned from the test and discusses moving forward with building a developer community. In addition, we touch on the benefits and challenges of building and sustaining an open source product from the ground up.