Joshua Ferraro, Debra Denault, and Chris Cormack (see two of their smiling faces here) of LibLime joined me to discuss their work at LibLime and on koha in particular. I've been watching koha for the better part of eight years, since it was first released (if you don't believe me, check here). That this "gift" has led to hundreds of implementations in many countries worldwide in 27 languages is a remarkable testament to the power of free/libre/open source software in libraries.

The most exciting thing to me is that they're growing a healthy company around the koha project and related services without sacrificing anything about what made this one of the first important library free software projects. It's just as available to everyone today as it was back in 2000 when they first started sharing it with all of us, and it's better than ever.

Listen in to hear this whole story, and in particular, to hear about the latest and greatest features coming in the soon-to-be-released koha 3.

Some things we mentioned included:

• Marshall Breeding's History of Library Automation, which stops at 2006 - LibLime, Index Data and Equinox don't even appear!
• translate.koha.org, the Koha Translation Manager, which is based on Kartouche.
• Version Control for Koha using Git, the koha documentation for using their git environment, which you can also browse right here.
• Wikipedia on electric fences. You'll have to listen to understand.

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so I'll apologize to Josh, Debra, and Chris and anyone listening for the audio being a bit uneven, and for the annoying echo you'll hear sometimes. I'll iron out the gear upgrades and things will sound better next time around.

Oh, one last thing - I've installed the encl_remote module for drupal which should allow me to *finally* link to the podcast audio directly from this blog with enclosure-style links. So if you're subscribed here, you should get the 'cast files, too! And the link to the audio file is just below these very words a few centimeters or so. Let me know if these work for you.

Gary Price of ask.com is like that great reference librarian you remember from childhood or with whom you used to work who *always* knows seven great answers to any question that starts with "Where would I go to look for...", and tells you which ones to try, in which order, and how they complement each other, and is always right. Except Gary and his colleagues do this for everybody on the whole web through his sites ResourceShelf and Docuticker, and for the past year through his job at Ask. Gary and I met several years ago, and we're new neighbors now, so we sat down together at a local coffee shop to catch up and to talk about his career and how he approaches his work.

There's a bit more ambient noise on this recording than usual, which means our recording levels are uneven sometimes, and I'm sorry about that. I hope you'll agree, though, that we have so much to learn from Gary about politely getting in the faces of our users to teach them what's out there and how to get the most out of it while saving them time, effort, and aggravation that it's worth listening through the noise.

Some of the many resources Gary mentions included:

• Price's List of Lists
• Intute
• the International Children's Digital Library
• Ask City
• Exalead
• WebSite-Watcher

This is one to listen to when you're sitting at your machine, or at least with a notepad nearby, because for everything listed above, he mentions at least two more resources worth your time and attention, and you'll want to try them out.

...oh!, and, I'd be remiss not to remind you that Gary just got married! Mazel tov to husband and wife, and safe travels! Stay tuned for more episodes to feature Gary and news about the latest and greatest resources on the 'net.

Find the feed at left, or just search for "library geeks" in iTunes to subscribe.