From now on, public libraries in Romania can use an Open Source system to manage their book loans, reservations, searching catalogs etc.

A group of IT consultants working at the Military Technical Academy and Contact Net, a Romanian company, have developed over the last two years the Open Source software for library automation, IBLA. The project was finished earlier this year.

The project receives funds from the Romanian and the Italian government, both states having the goal of developing an integrated public library system. The product has been tested until now in five libraries in Romania, and it is offered free of charge to all public libraries in the country. It seems there is interest shown from different types of libraries in this project: public ones, academic and not-for-profit libraries.

At this moment, the IBLA software now covers the main functions of an integrated library system. It uses Java to offer services that are independent of the client computer platform, which will also ease the adaptation of the system to other languages.

The project team would like to see IBLA adapted for use on handhelds and other mobile devices. More developers need to get involved in the project to reach this goal, and one of the items on the team's to-do list is making the system easier to use by the visually impaired persons.

IBLA is complementary to "The National Program for the Automation and Development of Public Libraries Services in Romania". The installation kit, documentation (technical and the user guide) will be available at the Ministry of Cultures and Religious Affairs, which will offer them free of charge to all the interested libraries across the country. Also, the technical formation of the representatives of the Public Libraries in Romania will be provided by the developing companies in PC utilization and Bibliologic Information Technology and applications.