Hi Julia,

Github is a fantastic tool, and it is indeed the best option if you are editing LaTeX, XML, source code or any non-binary files in a collaborative way and you want to have an elegant version control system. But it is not a document management system (unless you consider Dropbox also a document management system).  Minimally, a document management application should allow you to set up a metadata schema to describe documents and files, create controlled vocabularies, configure a full-text search engine, set up collaborative workflows etc.

Alfresco is the most-well known open-source document management system. I’ve used the community edition in my class on Document & Records management and asked students to build real-life prototypes for organisations, in parallel with setting up the same prototype with Sharepoint. All depends obviously on the existing skill set of people, but the configuration of Alfresco (in particular the creation of custom metadata schemas in XSD) is often a difficult nut to crack. Even if Alfresco has a lot of powerful features built in, most groups found Sharepoint easier to configure. All depends obviously on what type of specific needs your organisation has.

There are lots of open-source applications popping up here and there (https://www.openkm.com, http://www.seeddms.org/, http://www.opendocman.com/, etc). Often they are launched with a lot of enthusiasm but die a slow death after 2-3 years, in the absence of a viable business model. In the cultural heritage sector, http://collectiveaccess.org has for example successfully managed to build up a community around their tool and France has recently massively invested in an open-source application for digital preservation (http://www.programmevitam.fr), but I haven’t seen anything similar for “traditional" document management which would suit public or private administrations. Or someone else has any idea’s? 

Kind regards,

Seth van Hooland
Université libre de Bruxelles
http://homepages.ulb.ac.be/~svhoolan/
https://twitter.com/sethvanhooland
---
Books: http://freeyourmetadata.org/ - http://methodesnumeriques.org/ 

> On 26 Jan 2017, at 09:11, David Reeve <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Julia
>  
> My tech team will be using GitHub too.
>  
> Thanks
>  
> David
>  
> 
> Dr David Reeve
> Head of Information Strategy
> One Castlepark, Tower Hill, Bristol BS2 0JA
> Mobile: 07776858434
>  
> Email: [log in to unmask]
>  
> jisc.ac.uk
>  
>  
>  
>  
> From: The Information and Records Management Society mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Frank Guerino
> Sent: 25 January 2017 13:46
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Open source document management packages
>  
> Hi Julia,
>  
> I recommend you take a look at source code versioning tools like Git (a.k.a. GitHub) or Subversion.  They usually have the most advanced features and (these days) can handle very large documents.
>  
> I hope this helps,
>  
> Frank
> —
> Frank Guerino, Managing Partner
> The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT)
> http://www.if4it.com
> 1.908.294.5191 (M)
>  
>  
> On 1/25/17, 6:01 AM, "Julia Martin" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>  
> Dear all,
>  
> We are looking to improve our policy management practices and I was wondering if anyone can recommend an open source document management package?  We are looking for something which includes change and version control.
>  
> Many thanks.
>  
> Julia
>  
> Julia Martin • Head of Information Services
> LSTM Library • Pembroke Place • Liverpool • L3 5QA
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Seth van Hooland
Université libre de Bruxelles
http://homepages.ulb.ac.be/~svhoolan/
https://twitter.com/sethvanhooland

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