Looking through the Government Procurement Portal there wasn't a official Request for Proposal I guess that they made the decision based on the fact a large portion of our Public Libraries such as use SirsiDynix solutions they felt it was the best solution as it would be easier for other public libraries. On a side note I happened to login to Christchurch City Libraries today (first time since february) and they've rolled out BibloCommons on top of the current SirsiDynix solution they are using their reasoning is outline here http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/News/2011/BiblioCommons/ granted tis not Koha but its actually nice to see our core services starting to recover from the earthquake Kindest Regards, Christopher Downs
2011/5/4 Chris Downs <chris.downs@blueglobe.co.nz>:
Looking through the Government Procurement Portal there wasn't a official Request for Proposal
There was an RFI process, then 3 RFP, one for the ILS, one for discovery and one for hosting. It was on GETS http://www.dgmarket.com/tenders/np-notice.do~5329123 <-- hosting The organisations long listed after the RFI process were invited to respond to the RFP. Chris
Tēnā koutou! I think the most disconcerting element, is that according to http://www.natlib.govt.nz/about-us/news/29-april-2011-kotui-development?body... there were three vendor decisions taken. While it is novel that this in effect makes one experience safe from another, it will be quite tricky to ensure a seamless experience for the user. My pride in Koha aside, there were other alternatives I would have lauded. Evergreen would have been a wonderful choice. VuFind would have made some modicum of sense. Some elements of XC, though rough, should have been at least a wee bit intriguing. Why would one willingly choose a slate of products that is just not customisable in this day and age? Even if one were going to tow the proprietary company line, how is it that Sirsi, a truly crummy product after the merger, won out over Innovative? Was no research on satisfaction weighed in the decision making process? Was Ex Libris even on the table? I could understand why a decision to opt for those over Koha would be taken. They are rich products, despite living behind their velvet ropes. Sirsi's code wouldn't pass muster for most basic level computer science courses. Even Polaris would have made vague sense over the litigious Sirsi. EBSCO? Really? From an economic standpoint, this just continues to baffle me. In Koha or Kete, the National Library would have been supporting Kiwi employment, initiative, and innovation. The investment would stay at home, leading to truly rich developments fostered by people that are rooted in the same soil. It's boggling to have supported Kete only to turn about and look to summat seriously untested and inferior in its place. It is depressing to see what I formerly held as an innovative forward thinking National Library do a 180 and take a few paces then stall out. My 2 beads, Brooke
https://docs.google.com/View?id=dgcn28md_167f6j82cw8 Here's an interesting discussion/document showing Sirsi's perspective on the value of OSS vs proprietary. I think their take was pretty much totally wrong except for maybe UI. While Koha has impressive features and has already been proven in the real world, I think it could come a long way in terms of back-end UI, information architecture, and general website loading speed. When Wordpress upgraded their UI they jumped to 20,000,000 unique bloggers and 260,000,000 unique viewers a month. If we streamlined the back-end (I'm thinking about Drupal's dropdown menu for example, or wordpress's use of ajax) and came out with 3 different really nice OPAC themes (2 for web and 1 for mobile) I think people would start to not only see but know how customizable and forward thinking Koha really is. It's good to see memcached in 3.4 and the upgraded template system. This will probably help. As a web designer, this would be something I could contribute to I guess. I'm not good with perl. And here I am spouting without even contributing a cent of code. Sorry, I love Koha though. It's really good. Walker Blackwell University of Vermont
participants (4)
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BWS Johnson -
Chris Cormack -
Chris Downs -
Walker Blackwell