Welcome to ALEX! ALEX is a collection of Perl modules and Perl/Tk widgets to do various library-related things - I'm currently working on an Free/Open-Source "cataloguer's workshop" - with the intention of ending up with a robust set of tools for quickly building library utilities. Some prerequisites: PostgreSQL The back-end database. It wouldn't be difficult to replace PostgreSQL with, say, MySQL... let me know if you're willing to hack on this :-) Get it here. Perl ...of course. Get it here. MARC::Record If you're a librarian working in Perl, you really need to know about this! Grab it from the CPAN. MARC::Descriptions Some glue for Tk::MARC. Get it here.

Here's the order you should build things: ALEX::DB - the database abstraction layer Tk::MARC - a Perl/Tk widget for MARC editing ALEX::Search - a Perl/Tk widget for searching ALEX::DB ALEX::Import - a Perl/Tk widget for importing to ALEX::DB ALEX::Export - a Perl/Tk widget, derived from ALEX::Search, for exporting records ALEX::Transfer - a perl/Tk widget, derived from ALEX::Search, for transfering records between "workfiles" ALEX::Scaffold - a (minimalist) sample application

Updates
2004.03.09 - 6:20 pm	Added page-forward and page-back to ALEX::Search, and updated the _browse routines for ALEX::Export and ALEX::Transfer accordingly.
2004.03.08 - 2:00 pm	Added ->getID() to ALEX::Search Added ability to transfer to workfile zero (main) in ALEX::Transfer Updated ALEX::Scaffold to allow editing of records with Tk::MARC
2004.02.28 - 2:20 pm	Just for fun, I've added screenshots of the various modules in action :-)
2004.02.28 - 1:30 pm	Fixed a bug in ALEX::DB - the index_browse wasn't properly handling workfiles. Modified ALEX::Search to make deriving easier (moved SearchFor string into $self). Added ALEX::Transfer, derived from ALEX::Search, which allows you to transfer records between workfiles. Updated ALEX-Scaffold to use ALEX::Transfer. I think that all the elements are now in place.... depending on how much time I can make available, we'll soon have a complete cataloguing system! :-)
2004.02.26 - 6:50 pm	Modified ALEX::Search to make deriving easier (Advertised the various FRAMEs). Added ALEX::Export, derived from ALEX::Search, which allows you to select and export records. Updated ALEX-Scaffold to use ALEX::Export.
2004.02.26 - 10:33 am	I've added a sample program, ALEX-Scaffold, which I use to excersise the current modules.
2004.02.24 - 10:09 pm	ALEX::Search: Added a check for undef in _browse. New version (0.3) is up.
2004.02.24 - 2:50 pm	This is where the content goes.... once I figure out what I'm going to put here. Basically, I needed a spot to put some Perl modules for the folks from the perl4lib mailing list to download from. We'll see how it goes. -David NOTE: I'm going to be renaming all of the ALEX stuff, so as not to conflict with Eric Lease Morgan's "Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts". I'm just trying to come up with a reasonable name.... I'm currently leaning toward "CALLI", after Callimachus, but I'm open to suggestions.