PHILADELPHIA — April 11, 2022 — VuFind® has joined the Open Library Foundation. The open source library discovery tool was developed at Villanova University and is maintained by an international development community that has been coordinated by staff at the University’s Falvey Memorial Library since 2007. VuFind is joining the foundation in order to ensure the long-term sustainability of VuFind, which is used by hundreds of libraries around the world.
By joining the Open Library Foundation, VuFind will benefit from infrastructure support including legal, operational, administrative, and financial resources. The foundation is also able to ensure that VuFind is owned by the VuFind community and is able to expand beyond the interests of any single entity.
Villanova University Librarian and Director of the Falvey Memorial Library, Millicent Gaskell, says providing for VuFind in perpetuity is a key component of the decision to join the Open Library Foundation. “VuFind was created by libraries for libraries and we want to ensure that it is sustainable and remains openly available. The Open Library Foundation provides structure and support to meet that goal.”
Open Library Board President Tom Kramer says supporting open source communities is the goal of the foundation, and VuFind is an excellent match. “It is a great honor to have VuFind join the Open Library Foundation. As a proud supporter of open source, the Foundation is able to provide projects like VuFind the stability and support they need to continue to serve libraries for years to come.”
VuFind Project Manager Demian Katz says VuFind already has a diverse global community, and he expects that to grow further under the Open Library Foundation. “A primary goal of the VuFind project has always been to provide users with a single, easy-to-use starting point for all of their library-related activities. By joining an organization hosting multiple synergistic projects, we have the potential for a lot of mutual benefit by serving as the front-end glue between various back-end systems. Villanova has been a great incubator for VuFind for more than a decade and remains strongly committed to future development, but we look forward to further expanding the project’s reach and sustainability through the Open Library Foundation’s resources and support.”
The Open Library Foundation is a not-for-profit foundation established to promote open source projects for libraries and to foster and support contribution, distribution, and sustainability of the benefits of these projects. The foundation provides the infrastructure for librarians, developers, designers, service providers, and vendors to collaborate with innovative open source technologies and develop transformative solutions for libraries.
The Foundation also includes existing open source communities including FOLIO, Project ReShare, the Global Open Knowledgebase (GOKb) and the Advanced Research Consortium (ARC).
More information is available at www.openlibraryfoundation.org.
About Villanova University
Since 1842, Villanova University’s Augustinian Catholic intellectual tradition has been the cornerstone of an academic community in which students learn to think critically, act compassionately and succeed while serving others. There are more than 10,000 undergraduate, graduate and law students in the University’s six colleges—the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Villanova School of Business, the College of Engineering, the M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing, the College of Professional Studies and the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Ranked among the nation’s top universities, Villanova supports its students’ intellectual growth and prepares them to become ethical leaders who create positive change everywhere life takes them. For more, visit www.villanova.edu.
About the Open Library Foundation
The Open Library Foundation was created in 2016 as an unbiased, independent not-for-profit organization to ensure the availability, accessibility and sustainability of open source and open access projects for and by libraries. Software developed by communities hosted by the Foundation is freely available under common open source licenses for personal, institutional or commercial use. The software is open and free in order to sustain an open collaboration of interested parties. The Foundation provides infrastructure by which the library community at large can organize, contribute to, and benefit from our projects — ensuring availability and a “safe haven” for member communities’ output that is separated from the needs and goals of any single contributor, user or affiliated party. Find out more at www.openlibraryfoundation.org.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy, Media Relations, Open Library Foundation
mediainquiries@openlibraryfoundation.org
978 223-0438