I was wondering if you have any interest in releasing a new version of
MARC::Record [1] to CPAN from CVS on SourceForge [2]. There hasn't been a
release since Dec 2004 but development has continued afoot since then.
The reason I ask is that the Evergreen people [3] have spent the last 2 years
building an open source ILS for the State of Georgia [4] and they are
dependent on some functionality that is in the CVS trunk. Their install
process is a bit stymied because the M::R on CPAN is way out of date. I also
get routine emails from M::R users around the world who don't understand why
the latest/greatest isn't on CPAN.
Hopefully I am not butting into an existing conversation here. I
thought as others were voicing their support for updating the cpan M::R
module, I would add my support as well. It's not just large projects
such as Koha or Evergreen who find these modules useful. We here at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found these modules
extremely useful for smaller projects as well. I've used it several times
for small, one-off projects as well as larger ones.
This is also a particularity key time to have the "latest and greatest"
available via cpan. Some of the features, such as better utf8 support,
are sorely needed. Recently Urbana-Champaign has just upgraded it's
Integrated Library System (ILS), allowing far better unicode support than
before. Unfortunately, there are not many (software) libraries can handle
these features. In addition, the library world is increasingly seeing the
value in experimentation and there is a need for good tools to support
these efforts.
The current module is a lifesaver and I'm grateful to people like Andy
Lester, Mike O'Regan, Ed Summers and Brian Cassidy and the others who
have made the module the excellent tool it already is. It would be great
to ensure that it doesn't languish at this crucial time.
ps. I'm not sending this email in any official capacity of the University
of Illinois or speaking for it in anyway. Just speaking as an interested
developer who uses it in his daily work.
Jonathan T. Gorman
Research Information Specialist
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
216 Main Library - MC522
1408 West Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801
