[Koha] The Potential Death of Koha in Pennsylvania Libraries

[Kyle Hall]

The State Library her in Pennsylvania has started planning for a
state-wide ILS. My Director, John Brice attended a tech committee
netting this past Friday, bringing myself and Cindy Murdock as well.
At the meeting, it was announced that HSLC and Equinox will be
installing Evergreen in 33 libraries currently using Millennium. In
all likelyhood, in the future all the libraries in the state will be
required to switch over to Evergreen. Needless to say, my boss and
myself are extremely upset by this proposition to say the least.

I would applaud the choice of a FOSS ILS, but the choice would not
bring any advantage. It appears to me to be a strictly financial
decision. The idea being pushed at the meeting was to give libraries
as little choice as possible to keep down costs. If we were forced to
switch to Evergreen, not only would our huge investment in Koha via
time and money be thrown away, but we would be forced into a new
system over which we would be no control or ability to customize. We
would have no control over the quality of service, as the servers are
planned to be centralized somewhere within the state. I do not relish
the idea of our current freedoms being taken away.

Kyle

http://www.kylehall.info
Information Technology
Crawford County Federated Library System ( http://www.ccfls.org )