Dear Professionals, After an extensive survey and analysis, an Expert Committee consisting of senior library professionals and teaching faculty of University of Mysore recommended the adoption of KOHA, an open source integrated library management system for automating libraries under University of Mysore including Main Library and libraries of Constituent Colleges (5), Institutions (13), PG Centers (3) and Departments (37). Our earlier attempts (before 2003) of automating our libraries using ILMSs like Libsys, TLMS and SLIM were discontinued with little OPAC work done due to various reasons. However, now we have migrated the bibliographic records created as a result of earlier attempts into a newly adopted system KOHA. Why KOHA? KOHA is selected based on the following key considerations: 1) Features / Capabilities: - KOHA’s cataloging, OPAC and circulation modules are of superior quality to alternativesavailable, both commercial and open access ones; - Acquisition and Serials control modules are adequate for our requirement at this time. We expect these modules to improve in the next version of KOHA 3.4 especially in the context of Indian libraries in the coming months due to extensive ongoing developmental work going on both sponsored and through strong KOHA community members (130) world over; - KOHA is MARC 21, SIP2, UTF-8 compliant and fully web based; - Moving context based “browse shelf” facility helps us to know books on both sides of selected books on the concerned shelf; - OPAC searching automatically picks up Google books concerned based on ISBN number with a facility to see related books, many a times with a full text availability; - KOHA supports integration of barcode and RFID integration/ implementation; - Web 2.0 and Lib 2.0applications 2) Adoption of KOHA in India: - Good number of libraries including few university libraries have already adopted KOHA; - KOHA has become very popular in Kerala; - Some libraries using other ILMSs have already switched to KOHA and some are in the pipeline; - British Council librariesin India and Sri Lanka, who were using Libsys are in the process of switching over to KOHA soon. - DRTC has taken appropriate steps towards popularizing KOHA 3) Upfront and ongoing cost: All software including operating system (Linux) and database server (MySQL) are open source irrespective of number of libraries, records, OPACs etc. Continuity of KOHA as open source is ensured. 4) No risks involved: KOHA being open source software we are not tied up with any software vendor and thereby we have freedom to choose /change any service vendor any time. 5) KOHA implementation at UoM: - KOHA is already installed and configured on Linux operating system; - Migration of existing record to KOHA is completed; - Creation of new OPAC records is in full swing; - We have trained more than 30 staff for database creation and all housekeeping modules; - Few staff members have been trained for Linux administration; - Still we need to implement circulation module; 6) Model we have adopted: - Createsingle database of estimated 11 lakhs bibliographic records of books available in above mentioned 56 libraries; - Distributed housekeeping and data entry activities at all institutions / colleges; - Search single or all libraries at one go; - Unique accession number for each document irrespective library holding it; - Unique patron number for different level of faculty, research scholars and students irrespective institution/college; - Plan to introduce master membership cardwith eligibility to borrow documents from any library under UoM; 7) Vendor for implementation and support work: - Nucsoft OSS Labs, Bangalorehave supported us in this venture; - They have strong team of more than 11 staff for serving their customers; - Apart from installation, configuration and maintenance, they have successfully migrated the old records originated from ILMSs mentioned above; - Our experience with OSS Labs is very goodwith ensured service in shortest possible time. 8) Database on third party cloud computing platform: - OSS Lab people have arranged hosting our database in cloud computing environment with Amazon’s elastic cloud computing platform with 99.95% availability, 99.9999% data durability, information security based on ISO 27000 standards, scalability and flexibility. 9) Future planning: - Networking of all library OPACs of affiliated colleges under University of Mysore; - Development of KOHA Community in India (in fact many libraries in Kerala have already adopted KOHA as well in other states facilitating formation of KOHA community); - We expect our staff to do documentation, testing and even some software development. 10) General comments: - Taking into account of the least cost involved only for implementation and maintenance, KOHA is the best option for different kind of libraries including academic, special and public libraries of all sizes; - We need to have more number of training programs on KOHA; - Some of the LIS Departments have already added KOHA in their syllabus, others need to follow; - Our users are very happy with performance of KOHA in all angles. Our OPAC is available at URL: http://libcat.mysore-univ.org All our library staff have been giving their best for realizing the long pending library automation and modernization program. Our Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor Prof. V.G. Talawar has given all the necessary support and encouragement in our endeavour. I appreciate in getting your feedback. I shall be glad to answer any related questions. Dr. IRN Goudar Visiting Professor and Library Advisor Mysore University Library Mobile: 919611165781 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.