Hi everybody !!! My name is Marius Stoica, I am a librarian at the Arad County Public Library<http://aradlibrary.org>from Romania. We are trying for some time to find the best and the most convenient Integrated Library System. We have finally two choices: our current ILS, a proprietary software that is immature and quite experimental and, of course, Koha. Next week I will make an official presentation of Koha and my colegues will have a trail period of about one week to test a Koha demo. Aftar that we will decide which of these two ILS to use and end this period of transition. In the last weeks I become quite familiar with Koha and a biG bIG BIG fan [?], I would like to see our library using Koha, even more, I would like to see a community of Koha users in my country. There are two small libraries that use Koha in Romania. Both are specialized academic libraries. Arad County Public Library <http://aradlibrary.org/> can be the first encyclopedic medium size library that uses Koha and this can be an extraordinary revelation for the other county libraries from Romania. Two ideas that can stand as a revelation: - first, there is the fact that with Koha you can implement a faster, easier and cheaper consortium network for all the libraries in a county, while in Romania there is no functional consortium of county public libraries; - second, there is the fact that librarians from Romania and the public servants in general are not aware of other choices regarding the IT infrastructure, i.e. free, open source software and the empowering and emancipation this kind of software can bring in the field of work. So, I want to have as many arguments as possible to advocate Koha in front of my colleges and the administration stuff of our library. I will appreciate any kind of support, advice or good thought. Warm regards, Marius Stoica
