Bauble is developed by one person with very limited time. As much as I would like Bauble to be useful to as many people and institutions as possible it's difficult to know all the scenarios that folks might be testing or trying out Bauble. We use it at Belize Botanic Gardens and it works for us and I develop features as we need them.
If you try or use Bauble then please let me know how it works and what problems you have with the software. Be as specific as possible. If you want Bauble to continue improving please consider donating to Belize Botanic Gardens so that I might be able to spend more time on developing the software. See the bottom of this page for contact information.
News
Read the news to see what's been happening lately.
About Bauble
Bauble is a software application to help you (yes you) manage a collection of botanical specimens. It is intended to be used by botanic gardens, herbaria, arboreta, etc. to manage their collection information. It is a open, free, cross-platform alternative to BG-Base and similiar software.
Features
- Bauble is designed to be simple, elegant and intuitive.
- Bauble is free. Bauble is licensed under the GPL which means you can download, distribute and change the source code for Bauble as long as the changes you make are also licensed under the GPL. This in no way affects the data you manage with Bauble.
- Bauble is cross-platform. Bauble supports both Linux and Windows and could easily be ported to other platforms if there was interest.
- Bauble supports a wide variety of database backends. It has been tested using SQLite, Postgres, and MySQL. In theory it will work with Sybase, Firebird/Interbase, and SapDB/MaxDB, Oracle and MSSQL.
- Bauble can generate reports through an XSL formatter backend. There is no fancy report designer but there is an interface that allows you to pass the results of a search through an XSL formatter. This allows you to layout your data any way you wish and save it in a just about any format you can imagine including PDF, XML, or HTML. Hopefully we'll get something a but more user(i.e. non-techy) friendly in the future.
- Bauble is transaction safe. All database queries and updates are done through a transaction so if in the process of editing a record you make a mistage you can always back out. Although once your changes are committed to the database there's no turning back.
- Bauble can export data in CSV or Access to Biological Collection Data (ABCD) format. In the future we hope to support other standard formats such as ITF2, BioCASE, TAPIR, etc.
- Bauble supports tagging. You can tag any arbitrary data stored in a Bauble managed database with arbitrary names. This way you can create collections of records organized the way you want with names you give them.
- ....and lots more.
Documentation
- Installing Bauble on Linux
- Installing Bauble on Windows
- Using Bauble
- Bauble Wiki - Hopefully all the documentation will eventually move here
Download
Installers
Windows
bauble-0.8.2-setup.exe
This is a basic Windows installer. It doesn't do much else than
extract the contents to a directory and creates some links
in the Start Menu.
Linux - No packages available yet. If anyone is willing to create .deb or .rpm files then please let me know. Either way just download the source, extract it and type 'python setup.py install' in the directory you extracted it to. See under "Source" for a list of prerequisites.
Source
To install from the source you will need Python 2.4, GTK 2.10, PyGTK, SQLAlchemy and lxml, and a Postgres, MySQL, or SQLite database connector. For our friends using Windows that want to look at, run or compile from source there are two scripts at scripts/install_deps.py and scripts/install_gtk.py in the source distribution that should install all the dependencies and GTK programs you'll need. Installing all these extra programs and dependencies are not necessary for the Windows installer, only when running from the source or building the installer.
Stable version
You can browse the latest source code from Launchpad at https://code.launchpad.net/~bauble/bauble/trunk or check it out at...
bzr branch https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~bauble/bauble/trunk
or visit the project page at https://launchpad.net/bauble
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Why another collection manager application?
At Belize Botanic Gardens we felt that the other collection management software was either too expensive, inadequate or only supported Windows so we decided to create our own. -
But why for free?
We feel that current collection management software is overpriced especially for small institutions in developing countries. Biodiversity affects our entire world and everything that relies on it to live. To help protect such a fragile system the management of information related to biodiversity should not be restricted. -
I found a bug. What can I do about it?
File a bug report here.
Contact
For more information about Bauble contact me at <brett at belizebotanic dot org>.
