Dear Mr. Bissels: Joshua Ferraro forwarded your e-mail to me concerning documentation of Koha publicity and sales materials. Early last year the Crawford County Federated Library System decided to proceed with the Koha ILS. We compared Koha with some other commercial software. Of the nine libraries only one was convinced to go with Koha at the start the other eight preferred a commercial vendor software. When CCFLS was considering Koha and other commercial software packages there were not any sales brochures. We went to the developers web site and we did a site visit to Nelsonville to see Koha in action. However, the biggest sales tool we had was the actual program. Since Koha is open source we downloaded the software installed it on an old computer we had lying around. We then imported two libraries Marc records. We called this our proof of concept presentation. When we demonstrated to the librarians, with their own data, they were really impressed. However, one library complained that they did not like the look of the templates. So one of our IT staff revised the template to look the way the librarians asked. This really impressed the libraries that with open source if you don't like something you can always change it yourself. Or if you can't do it yourself hire someone to follow YOUR specifications. With the proof of concept we were able to show all of the libraries that we could import the records, change the look and feel of the program to our specifications and get it up and running. With all of these steps proven in the selection process we really did not need sales materials. CCFLS did develop a number of documents internally mostly comparing and contrasting Koha and a couple of other ILS's. In fairness, and with the idea of giving you all of the information we currently have a relationship with Liblime. Liblime came and give our libraries a demonstration of the program and also demonstrated the program through a video conference. We also hired Liblime to add the Zebra index to the program. .Currently CCFLS and Liblime have a contract for support. If you have any questions about Koha please feel free to email me at jbrice@ccfls.org. Sincerely, John Brice System Administrator Crawford County Federated Library System Joshua M. Ferraro wrote:
-- Joshua Ferraro SUPPORT FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE President, Technology migration, training, maintenance, support LibLime Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS jmf@liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS
----- Forwarded Message ----- From: "gerhard bissels" <gerhard.bissels@uclh.nhs.uk> To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 9:34:02 AM (GMT-0500) America/New_York Subject: [Koha] Comparing Koha with commercial systems
Dear All,
I am starting a small specialist library and have to select a Library Management System.
Opting for one of the big vendors seems easy to justify because everybody else does it. However, before I can seriously look at something as unusual as Open Source I need to be able to present a watertigh, fair and thorough evaluation method.
I would be interested in the procedure and related documentation which other libraries used when they had to select a LMS. If you had documents you could share with me I'd be very grateful!
Kind regards,
Gerhard
Gerhard Bissels Librarian The Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital, UCLH NHS Foundation Trust 60 Great Ormond Street London WC1 3HR Gerhard.Bissels@uclh.nhs.uk ++44 20 7391 8825
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