By public library I mean here a library providing some kind of universal access to its assets, one whose readership isn’t exclusively tied and restricted to a particular organization – including the generally called public libraries, but also many specialized libraries, such as the academic of the open kind. Despite all efforts, public libraries continue to face strong barriers to their participation in the information society. Participants of the World Meeting on the Future of the ISIS Software recognized that “the ISIS Software Family has a unique technological concept and developmental mission to cope with Information Storage and Retrieval Systems (ISRS), particularly for developing countries where the technology is widely known and used; that the ISIS Software Family has now fully embraced the Free and Open Source Software approach and the support of UNICODE structures to be fully open and multilingual” (Rio Declaration 2008), restating thus the persistent relevance of this software family.
OSS (Coar 2006) is defined as software whose source code is freely available, therefore allowing for free inspection and/or utilization, i.e., it is available for study and use by everyone without any payment or any other barrier to access. the lack of technical skill in libraries, a situation that libraries share with much of the public and cultural sectors. The study of OSS ILS, and of the their adaptation to the needs of specific public libraries may be the solution to this. Library Management Systems) that enhances digital archive interoperability between a diverse range of libraries
