[Koha] Why Koha?

[Scott Owen]

We also tried both Evergreen and Koha.

We are a k-12 school district in Michigan.
The main factors in deciding on Koha were:
1.  The ease of installation.
2.  LDAP integration.
3. "true" web based system (no staff client necessary).
4. Friendly (easy to use) interface.
5. Price   :-)
6. The Koha community seemed to be much "friendlier" than Evergreen. (Just my opinion.....I'm sure there a many very nice people in the Evergreen community as well....)

Regarding #1 ... I'm no *nix power-user...but have used different flavors on/off for a number of years......after 3-4 attempts I was unable to get a "real" working Evergreen system. At the time the Perl dependancy chase for Evergreen was just to much of a pain.....I tapped out..... 
Koha....I ran our initial system (ver 2.2.9) on a windows XP virtual machine.....ran perfect for over a year as we "kicked the tires" of Koha. 
I now run the latest git version on Debian....works great. Good "how to's" and documentation.....

Regarding #2...as a public school....LDAP integration was an absolute must. Koha current implementation works flawlessly and was a breeze to set up.

-Scott Owen
Alma Public Schools


>>> Buster<storypage at gmail.com> 3/1/2011 9:17 AM >>>
Hello, group. My system is currently evaluating both Koha and Evergreen as our open source alternatives. We are installing both on computers here in our library in order to test them out, visiting other libraries, reading this list as well as the one for Evergreen, and speaking to other librarians using one of these systems.

It occurred to me that it might useful to know why other library system chose one system over the other.

So, why did you choose Koha over Evergreen, and are you happy with your choice? Was it a difficult decision?

I have to say that I'm presently more impressed with Koha, but haven't taken quite as close a look at Evergreen. I'm also very impressed with the knowledge and helpfulness of this community, a huge selling point for me personally.

You may write to me off-list if you are more comfortable with that. 

Thanks in advance,
--Jim Maroon

storypage at gmail.com

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