Thank you, Cory, I would be interested in your fellow. To LibLime's credit, I'm in the Newsgroup because they pointed me here when it quickly became apparent that their services were too expensive for our teacher training college and related organisations. We use a homegrown Microsoft Access db at present (with barcode scanner!), so exporting would be no problem (even I could handle this end of it!). Just time and energy... Please pass along the referral offline if it's not appropriate to do so within the newsgroup. Thanks much, Nelson

-----Original Message----- From: Cory Jaeger [mailto:cjaeger@dce.k12.wi.us] Sent: 18 February 2009 04:45 PM To: nelson@cfce.org.za Subject: Re: [Koha] Counting the cost

We're working with a fellow in India who charges only $20/hour. He has been vastly better than LibLime who we were contracting with previously. At that price even some regular ongoing support wouldn't break a school's budget.

Without seeing your existing catalogging system I doubt anyone can tell you whether it would work with Koha or not. Since Koha IS a catalogging (and check out, etc.) system I would think you would be best to migrate to Koha. The guy we have been working with seems quite good at migrating data (again better than LibLime was for us.) If it's not to hard to export data out of your system, and if the data is fairly complete, he might be able to import it all into Koha for you.

Let me know if you want his contact info.

Cory A. Jaeger Network Manager D.C. Everest Area Schools 6300 Alderson ST Weston, WI 54476 (715) 359-4221 x1393

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"Nelson Fredsell -CCE" <nelson@cfce.org.za> 02/18/09 8:24 AM >>> I am considering Koha for our very small libraries (Fewer than 50 transactions/day). We might get some help doing the initial setup on a CentOS 5.2 server. We're wanting a basic install, allowing patrons to do online search of catalogues of multiple collections in a single library, and multiple libraries belonging to legally separate NGOs.

+Once set up, is it possible that it could need very little support/maintenance? We could pay something for set up, but ongoing annual support fees we'd like to avoid.

+And I suppose that support could be provided remotely, perhaps on an hourly basis, with the exception of possibly needing to reboot the server.

+We have limited IT skills inhouse and NO full time library staff.

+ Staff who do the cataloguing would not be professional librarians.

+We've developed our own cataloguing system, not standard in any way - can Koha work with this? Maybe over time we'd like to standardize.

+If so, the chaser question is that each very small (NGO/school) library has its own cataloguing system: would this be a problem for Koha - single install, multiple administrators (one at each library).

I don't want to bite off more than we can chew, and I don't want to leave my NGO in the lurch after I'm no longer employed there. I have about three months to implement something, and make sure it's stable.

Thanks very much for feedback,

Nelson

Administrator / resident techie

Centre for Creative Education

Cape Town, South Africa

www.cfce.org.za