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LibraryBox

LibraryBox v2.0 Public Beta

librarybox v2.0

Today I am more than pleased to announce the launch of the public beta release of LibraryBox v2.0. From the announcement page on the website:

After months of work, the v2.0 codebase for the LibraryBox Project has reached Release Candidate 1, which means it’s time for a Public Beta! There are a huge number of improvements, enhancements, and all around awesome things in the v2.0. I recommend you take a look at the About v2.0 page to see the highlights.

Just a reminder about what “Public Beta” means. This is absolutely releasable code, or I wouldn’t put it out there…but no code is fully tested until it’s deployed into the world. I’ve built over a dozen LibraryBoxen using this code, tested them, changed settings and set up Sync networks, FTP’d into them, and just about every other thing I could think of to make sure it was stable. There was a private beta among just a very small handful of testers, but to really make sure that this is ready for prime time, it needs to be in the public. So that’s what we’re doing.

Almost certainly this code will be the full release v2.0 code. But if one of you brave souls discovers something that we didn’t, I want to be able to fix it before we are officially at v2.0.

I hope you enjoy the code. Please build your own, upgrade your existing LibraryBox 1.5 to the v2.0, or better yet, buy a pre-built LibraryBox and help support the project towards the v2.5 release.

There’s a lot more coming regarding the release, including a couple of video tutorials and screenshots. But perfect is the enemy of the good, so I’m getting the code out before the website is totally ready. I’ll keep adding to the site as we move quickly towards the full release of the v2.0…if the public beta goes as expected, I imagine that will be very quick in coming.

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

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