Dear Professionals, ONCE AGAIN I INVITE PROFESSIONAL FRIENDS TO SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCES, VIEWS, ETC ON THIS IMPORTANT PRACTICAL TOPIC. As you are aware I had posted a lis-forum message about KOHA Library Management System. I got few questions directly and few through lis-forum about process of transition to Koha from other LMS.Ours was a tough decision. As mentioned already we had Libsys 14 years back. Few thousand OPAC records were created using it. It was not used for any other house keeping activities. Probably our library leadership failed to implement Lib Automation fully. I learnt that the company asked for solving problem concerned to Y2K, a problem hyped unnecessarily. Then was a lull period for few years. Then one of professor in Dept of LIS started MULAP (Mysore Univ Lib Auto Project) some time during 2002 or so. Again a good number of records were added using another LMS SLIM and OPAC was made available. That project too came to halt once the project period was over. But automation activity was not taken further by our library for reasons known to the library leadership. The present VC Prof V.G: Talawar took keen interest in improving the library services including its modernization and automation. I was appointed in July 2010 as Adviser to Library with a task of rejuvenating the library system. I was very enthusiastic initially. But faced N number of problems of different kinds, which I can't elaborate further. Luckily the entire library staff have been with me, which made my job comfortable in spite of other problems including the some of the unscientific library procedures practiced. I tried to talk to Libsys people to revive the program with their LMS, who advised me to go for their Libsys 7 and quoted 14.6 lacs that too for 10 user clients and limited number of OPAC clients for a single library. I wanted to have all our 58 libraries to work as a single system, but with their house keeping activities independently. I have been Libsys user for the last 15 years or so. Their service has been poor inspite of being under AMC and also they are are very rigid in their approach. But we have to accept that it is a good LMS, but without much flexibility as they don't comply with many important international standards. SLIM was the next option for us as we still had license for its earlier version. I tried a lot, but they went on insisting for buying the new version. Since I was firm, they tried to revive the old installed version with us, but failed. Their technical person expressed his inability. Our version is being used in number of colleges in Maharashtra. This being the case how we can expect colleges to spend about 4 lacs for new version. Moreover they told that they don't have Linux version. More importantly they wanted us to change our office procedures, as they did not want to give any support for customisation. It was also difficult for us expect good service from them even for the new version they were insisting us to buy. All these developments made us to think of other LMSs. Next alternatives were VTLS, NewGenLib and KOHA. No doubt VTLS is one of the best, but being international we were not sure of getting support for an university library like ours, having complicated activities. NewGenLib would have been good choice. But the sequence of their steps they have taken after announcing it as OS, are discouraging. They told that they will not give any support for OS version. They are marketing NewGenLib, with the claim of enterprises version. Their OS version itself being good, I don't know why we should pay such a hefty amount, just for few improvements over OS version. It would have been nice for them to give paid service for installation, configuration, customisation, migration of data, and AMC, etc. It would have been a great service apart from earning a lot by serving more number of institutions. Unfortunately they never tried to build NewGenLib community for its developments as is the case with most of the OS software like KOHA. At this level we did rigorous experiments with KOHA. We invited Mr Sirohi of OSS Labs for a presentation as we did earlier for NewGenlib. After one complete day grilling by my colleagues, faculty in our LIS Dept and few other Librarians at Mysore and possible developments of KOHA we decided to go for it. OSS Labs came up to our expectations. They did installation, configuration of KOHA. Helped us in migrarting about 1 lac old records. Did lot of customisation. Hosted our database on Amazon server (cloud hosting). Trained our staff sufficiently. Gave us ready frameworks for books, thesis, journals ( subsets of MARC 21) formats. They are helping us in all respect. We have added another lac of OPAC records. Acquisition work is being done effectively. Circulation work started just now. We are generating Membership ID cards are printed directly from patron records along with photograph taken using a webcam. University of Mysore being one of the oldest in the country, we have lot of complicated manual library practices. We try to find possible solutions after detailed deliberations among ourselves. We will go for RFID too for selective collections. Rigorous training of our library staff both by OSS Labs and in house, some time by our LIS Dept has made our staff confident of doing good job. We have taken up the editing job of records created earlier, especially keeping in view of MARC 21. For the sake of convenience I have reproduced my earlier lis-forum posting. Dr. I.R.N. Goudar Visiting Professor Cum Library Adviser University of Mysore ----------------------------------------------- Contents of Earlier Posting: Dear Professionals, *I invite experiences, comments and opinions of professionals in the matter concerned to the selection of and migration to suitable Library Management System (LMS) for different kind of libraries taking into account of all factors like size and type of libraries, service after sale, cost factor, customization, availability of community for development in case of Open Source S/W, stability in the market, world wide popularity, compliance to international standards, cost, etc.* This discussion should help professionals for selecting suitable LMS and also for migrating from one ILMS to other if required. I have given below a detailed account of the entire process we did while adopting new LMS and implementing it. * Our Experience at University of Mysore*: *Background:* Our library had adopted Libsys 13 years back itself and was used for creating few thousand OPAC records. Later in 2001 SLIM was used for adding a sizable number of records to our OPAC. For some reason or the other these LMSs were not used for other housekeeping activities. After my joining UoM one year back I did lot of home work for choosing suitable LMS including the continuation of Libsys and SLIM. I did not want to jump for a new one immediately, but try the ones for which we already had licenses although for old versions of these LMSs. I contacted both the vendors, but failed to get favourable response, as both insisted on selling their new versions with very high price rather than helping us to revive the old versions. *Exercise for Selection of New LMS:* We did a serious exercise before choosing KOHA. We constituted a committee of experts in the field to recommend the suitable LMS for UoM. We also conducted one full day brain storming session on this matter by inviting 7-8 librarians using different LMSs. I had also distributed 7 page list of criteria for consideration and discussion. As you are aware there are number of commercial in the market and Open Source ILMSs. The good ones under commercial category are very costly ( in the range of 1.5 -15 lacs) depending upon the sophistication of the system, size of the library, after sales service, their market stability, etc. Some of them costing around 1.5-3.0 Lacs are not suitable for bigger libraries like university libraries. We short listed NewGenLib and Koha based on many criteria. For the last few years NewGenLib is available as open source LMS. However, for the last one year or so the developers are vending an enterprises version of NewGenLib as they claim. While the earlier version of NewGenLib is still available in OS the developers have stopped giving service to OS version users as indicated by their mail to me. Unfortunately we don't have NewGenLib user community like that of KOHA for providing guidance, service, custamisation and adding new features for its open source version. We also don't have 3rd party service providers for NewGenLib OS version. We decided to go for KOHA as we felt that it is not only suitable for UoM with all its best features and functionalities, but we can get service support by a established third party like OSS Labs, Bangalore. More importantly improvements in functionality and features of KOHA are ensured due to its strong community world over. OSS Labs also has received some international support for its contribution towards KOHA 3.4 Version. Koha also has over a dozen vendors worldwide that provide services and develop the software. Several libraries around the world sponsor development and contribute to Koha in other ways like testing, documentation and even development. *Koha has always been and will always be open source and free.* *Automation Model Adopted at UoM and KOHA: * We have 58 libraries directly under UoM participating in our automation program including Main Library, Libraries of 5 colleges, 13 institutions and 36 Departments. Once completed, the OPAC will have about 10 Lacs records. *OPAC is single for all libraries: Centralised database, decentralised inputting and housekeeping activities and Universal access to OPAC; Unique accession number for every record in the OPAC irrespective of their location in different libraries. We also plan to issue patron ID cards with Unique ID Number across all libraries. This card would serve as Universal card among the group of libraries concerned. We have hosted our database in cloud hosting environment (Amazon C2) and there by no expenditure on server, maintenance, manpower, air-conditioning, etc. We pay nominal monthly rental to the server maintenance. All participating libraries access the server directly for their housekeeping activities. **Status of KOHA Implementation:* So for we have added about 2 lac bibliographic records from 5 participating libraries to our OPAC. MARC 21 is strictly followed. KOHA has been in use for Acquisition of books and other documents. Membership IDs are being printed through KOHA. Circulation section work has been experimented successfully on trial basis taking into all features including creation of patron database, transactions, fine calculations, reminders, etc. The same will be practiced next week onwards coinciding the commencement of new academic year. We will start Serials Control job very soon. We are downloading bibliographic records from libraries like LOC using Z39.50. Anybody can access our OPAC at* http://libcat.mysore-univ.org/* Both our library staff and users are very happy with features and functionalites of Koha. *We have not even spent one third of what we would have spent for a medium priced commercial LMS. The amount we paid to our service provider Nucsoft (its OSS Labs unit), Bangalore** covered installation and configuration, migration of existing data, training, little bit customisation, hosting initially on cloud hosting environment and AMC for one year. *The server is 99.95% reliable, accurate and 24 hours on time without any breaks. We need not spend our time and money and space for server, air-conditioning and its maintenance or for system administration. The infrastructure is also scalable, additional system resources can be procured within minutes if required. *Koha Capabilities at a High Level:* Koha is the most advanced open source Integrated Library Management System (ILMS) in the world. It has won many awards and is being used by thousands of libraries. All modules including Cataloging, Circulation, OPAC, Acquisitions, and Serials Control are integrated. Compared to all other LMSs the Cataloging, OPAC and Circulation module are superior with many useful features and functionalities. The user community loves Koha's OPAC. *Costs associated with Koha:* Many of the commercial LMSs jike costs depending upon type and size of the library, number of housekeeping clients, number of simultaneous OPAC clients we opt, number of participating libraries, modules used. Koha being open source ILMS, we don't have to pay any amount for its procurement. Licensing costs nil, no matter how many libraries or servers we use the software in or what modules we use or how many users we have. However, to ensure proper installation and configuration of Koha, we may have to spend nominal amount to get third party service, unless we ourselves develop our expertise for installation, configuration and implementation of KOHA at our level. *Vendor Support for Koha: * There are over a dozen vendors worldwide that support Koha including 2 or 3 in India. Our vendor, Nucsoft is 15 year old, ISO 9001 company with mature and modern support processes. They operate a 12*7 support center for Koha and offer strong service level committments. But at the same time we are not tied to any vendor. We can change vendors or support the software on our own. This "No vendor lock-in" advantage of Koha will protect us against risks such as poor service, high prices or vendor insolvency. *Koha Features Summary:* Koha is web-based ILMS, with a MySQL database back-end. Cataloguing data stored is in MARC and is accessible via Z39.50. The user interface is very configurable and adaptable and has been translated into many languages. With integration of the powerful Zebra indexing engine, Koha became, scalable to support tens of millions of bibliographic records and thereby good solution for libraries of all kinds including large Academic Libraries. *Other Important Features of Koha include:* - Runs on Linux, Unix, Windows and MacOSX platform on the front-end - Simple, clear interface for librarians and members - Web based OPAC system (allows the public to search the catalogue in the library and at home). - Various Web 2.0 facilities like tagging and RSS feeds - Union catalog facility - Customizable search - Can be integrated with library web site - E-mail and/or txt patron's over dues and other notices - Easy-to-use circulation policies, strong patron management, intuitive navigation, and extensive permissions for staff accounts. - Full acquisitions system including budgets and pricing information (including supplier and currency conversion) - Ability to cope with any number of branches, patrons, patron categories, item categories, items, currencies and other data (Most important) - Serials system for magazines or news papers - Koha is multi-tasking and enables updates of circulation, cataloguing and issues to occur simultaneously - Reading lists for members - Inbuilt facility for printing bar-codes and spine labels - Full catalogue, circulation and acquisitions system for library stock management. - Supports barcode and RFID implementation including bar-code generation and RFID writing. * **Feedback on Key Koha Modules: * *Union catalog* With its Union catalog facility one can have a single OPAC for a group of libraries. For example all libraries under one university set up including main library, departmental libraries, constituent college libraries, affiliated colleges can have single OPAC, but still carry on their respective house keeping activities including book acquisition, circulation of books etc independently without interfering in housekeeping of other libraries in the group. Most importantly, the catalogue created once for one book by any of the library, can be used by other libraries for creating their catalogue entry without keying again the details except class and accession number. *OPAC * Search within search is a fantastic facility. The system picks up related titles along with cover page from Google Books automatically, some time with full or partial text and contents page. The users apart from enjoying browsing of titles can use simple and advance search features like in any other ILMSs. They can also check their borrowing details, reserve items, make suggestions for new books, etc. *Cataloging* The cataloging module being MARC21 and Z39.50 compliant, library staff can automatically import bibliographic records from other libraries like Library of Congress and local libraries of their choice instead of data entry again and thereby ensure quality catalogue and saving time of library staff. *Circulation* The circulation module is one of the best features of Koha. Apart from enabling automated transactions in the counter using bar-code or RFID the system enables the counter staff to identify the borrower with the help of the photograph and/or the digital signature. The system allows the reservation of document by the users or the library staff and also facilitates sending overdue reminders through e-mail. *Acquistions* The acquisition model is fully integrated with management of document suggestions, approval for procurement and budget and budget under different headings. The details of the documents already keyed in could be used for cataloging automatically. *Serials* While there is scope for improving serials management of Koha, as it stands it serves our purpose. The upcoming version will take care of the present shortcomings. Various kinds of reports with statistics useful for management, library staff and users can be generated in Koha. The above mentioned opinion is based on library automation experience at NAL, Bangalore and UoM for 20 years as well my interaction with both librarians and LIS teachers. In no way I undermine the capabilities of other commercial/OS LMSs. Once again I invite a detailed discussion by professional on this topic. Please contact me if you have questions. Thank you, Dr. I.R.N. Goudar Visiting Professor Cum Library Advisor University of Mysore Formerly Scientist G and Head, Information Centre at NAL, Bangalore -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.