Dear Professional Friends, This posting is in the light of lot of interest generated on OSS for Library Management through Lis-forum. Many thanks to Dr. M.V. Sunil, who'sposting prompted me toshare the " Success Story of Mysore University Library Automation using OS Library Management Software KOHA". Two and half years back we chose KOHA after a considerable brainstorming and consultation with fellow librarians from different organisations using different ILMSs, both commercial and open source.Earlier our negotiations and discussions with NewGenLib marketing personnel failed due to some reasons. Our earlier automation attempts for the last 15 years with LIBSYS, TLMS and SLIM did not yield expected results due to various reasons, except creating few thousand OPAC records . We struggled a lot in migrating these records to KOHA that too in MARC-21 format. The UoM, almost a century old institution has got about 57 libraries including the main library and those of 5 constituent colleges, 3 PG centres, 13 Institutes and 36 departmental libraries. *I. Our Best Practices/**Special/Unique Features of Library Automation:* - Library database is hosted on Amazon EC-II cloud ( http://libcat.mysore-univ.org/). - No expenditure on Server - S/W related expenditure: KOHA being OSS no charge for software. We have spent < Rs. 4 Lacs together for the last 3 years covering service toall our participating libraries towards KOHA installation, configuration, training, migration of existing records, basic customisation, maintenance, etc. - 50% of this 4 Lacs goes towards cloud hosting of our combined database, which is less than a daily wage sweeper salary. - The model adopted: Centralized database with decentralized housekeeping activities including retrospective conversion, circulation, acquisition, serials control, etc. by all participating libraries under UoM and Open Access OPAC. - As of now the main library and 8 other libraries under UoM have done considerable work. - So far more than four lakh records have been added to our OPAC. - Adherence to MARC-21 standard. - Copy cataloging facility through Z39.50 protocol facilitates other libraries to import records to their OPACs. - Our OPAC is accessible through mobile [ http://mopac.mysore-univ.org]. - Connection reliability of database is 100% without any break even for a single minute for the last 30 months as evaluated by IRSpy [http://irspy.indexdata.com]. - Regional language records through Unicode for Kannada, Hindi and Urdu. Other language records to follow. - Modules implemented in the main library include acquisition, OPAC, circulation and serials control (underway). - The circulation module is being implemented in PG Centres and other colleges very soon. - No two documents have same accession number [barcode] in spite of database being common for all the participating libraries and the same is the case with patron ID numbers. - Blood group details in patron records as a step towards societal measure. - MARC records of more than 18000 e-books licensed from four well-known publishers with single search facility across publishers and hyperlink to concerned full-texts from OPAC. - OPAC records of all Ph.D. Thesis submitted to UOM and received in the library have been completed. - OPAC records for Journals are halfway through. - Attempts are being made to download useful OA books and create concerned OPAC records. - Additional features like browse by Subject collections/Specialcollections on Homepage. - Number of useful reports (for acquisition and circulation) are being generated. - The number of hits to our OPAC has crossed 93000 in about a year. - On an average >1000 patrons visit our library per day. - We have trained most of our regular staff and all trainees to handle atleast two modules of our KOHA system. - All our staff including trainees participate during technical discussions among ourselves and with software supporter. - KOHA's OPAC is very user friendly and has classic features like automatic link to Google books, Browse shelf, pre/post search selection for limiting hits to select participating library, various filter options, etc. *II. Few Innovative Services, Infrastructure, Special Centres and Recognitions:* - E-Resources Portal as a starting point for accessing thousands of journals and Lacs of e-books both licensed and OA. ( http://www.uni-mysore.ac.in/campus-wide-access-main-campus-pg-centres-consti... ) - Visitors to this portal for the last 11 months : Campus - About 25,000, Off Campus - About 20,000 each visit resulting in N number searches and downloads from various e-resources. - Both Campus Wide (including WiFi) and Off Campus access to E-resources - Usage statistics of UGC-INFLIBNET resources increased by 350% on an average in about two years. - We have added thousands of e-books of commercial publishers and will strengthen the collection further. - Digital Information Resource Centre (DIRC) with 120 systems, 600 visitors/day on an average. - A separate floor has been built with 12000 SFT and 250 additional systems have been procured for DIRC-II to be operational in about a months time. - A separate Career Information Resource Centre (CIRC) meant for competitive exams, about 150 visitors on an average/day. - Career Information Service Portal has been setup, needs little more updating. - A Learning Resource Centre for Visually/Physically Challenged with world class Assistive Technologies costing >50 lakhs. - UOM Institutional Repository has been setup just two weeks back with nearly 3200 documents uploaded so far, still we have along way cross for this venture (http://eprints.uni-mysore.ac.in/). - Extensive E-resources awareness and training programs at every departments, participation of even Chairpersons. - Research output reports (Citations count, h-index, etc) for Departments, Individuals, etc. - We took the initiative to make available all presentations of Refresher Courses and Orientation Programs of UGC Academic Staff College at UoM on Web (http://www.ugcascmysore.ac.in/). - The NAAC Peer Committee and AAAC rated our Library and its services as one of the best in the country. - Once even the Syndicate Meeting was held in library in recognition of our services with 45 minutes slot for our presentation. - Wide publicity by Local Media both print and electronic covering ourservices on their own, few with one/half page story. The well known UoM library had nose drive with its lowest web for the last 10-15 years due to various reasons. Thanks to Prof. V.G. Talawar, ex-VC, UoM, who took initiative to rejuvenate the library system 3 years back. The credit for our success goes to my colleagues specially Dr. C.P. Ramasesh the I/C Librarian, all our trainees and above all our user community of faculty members, research scholars and students, who supported, guided, shared my responsibility and participated in our endeavor. The present VC too is keen in supporting our activities to raise our library status to further heights. Our attempts will continue to make our system still more perfect, which is a lifelong process. You are welcome to give your opinion and comments about our services. I shall be glad to answer any related questions. Regards, -- -------------------------- Dr. I.R.N. Goudar Visiting Professor and Library Adviser Mysore University Library University of Mysore Manasagangotri, MYSORE - 570 006 Formerly Scientist 'G' and Head, Information Centre, NAL, Bangalore Tel: 0821-2419283 mob: 09611165781 E-mail: goudarishwar@gmail.com -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.