Ah, a subject near and dear to my heart. :-) Thanks, Yitzchak, for
bringing this up. 

In general, I think you may want to break down what it is you hope to
achieve, and see if there *are* projects that will help you get to where
you want to go, based on the resources you have at hand. If you need to
preserve the images you are creating as part of your digitization process,
you should probably be considering using a repository for the storage and
preservation of digital objects. If you have the developer resources, and
are keen to develop something on your own, there are a few ways to go,
using this approach (i.e. put a nice front end on a repository): Fedora
Commons has Islandora [1] (Drupal + Fedora), EULFedora [2] (Django +
Fedora), and Hydra [3] (Ruby on Rails + Fedora). DSpace has SkylightUI [4]
(CodeIgniter + DSpace's SOLR index), and probably more, I've heard of a
Joomla front end, but can't seem to find a link for it.

There are a few open source page turning interfaces, which I'm sure you'll
see mentioned in response to this thread, as well as in the archives. The
Internet Archive Bookreader [5] is my personal favorite.

And, I might as well do a shout-out here, if anyone out there is thinking
of using DSpace + SkylightUI for digital library materials, let's talk. :-)

I can also say, for us, here, we have plenty of librarians who needed
*something* to put objects in, so standing up a repository was a fairly
easy way to address that need, and to do so in a way that they liked and
appreciated (DSpace gave them the tools to really dive in to the metadata
aspect of their projects). Now, they're comfortable with DSpace, and are
beginning to think of the repository as a service--tip of the hat to
Stuart Lewis, thanks for telling us this is OK :-)

[1] http://islandora.ca/
[2] http://readthedocs.org/projects/eulfedora/
[3] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/hydra/The+Hydra+Project
[4] http://skylightui.org/
[5] http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/bookreader

--
HARDY POTTINGER <[log in to unmask]>
University of Missouri Library Systems
http://lso.umsystem.edu/~pottingerhj/
https://MOspace.umsystem.edu/
"No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone,
turn back." --Turkish proverb






On 9/8/11 1:22 PM, "Yitzchak Schaffer" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hello all,
>
>Can anyone suggest projects or general approaches for providing access
>to digitized books on the web? We're not interested in CONTENTdm,
>Greenstone has worked for us in the past but will not work for our
>ongoing projects.
>
>I don't have real experience with DSpace and such repository products,
>but they seemed ill-suited for this purpose when I've examined them in
>the past. Omeka (at last evaluation) is not compatible with hierarchic
>objects (like books).
>
>I am rather amazed that I have not been able to find any FOSS dedicated
>to this. I am currently favoring the idea of creating a web app using a
>decent framework (symfony2) designed for this purpose (web presentation
>of hierarchic text-based entities).
>
>Many thanks,
>
>-- 
>Yitzchak Schaffer
>Systems Manager
>Touro College Libraries
>212.742.8770 ext. 2432
>http://www.tourolib.org/