[Koha] Introduction

[Katrin Fischer]

Hi John,

thx for the introduction and welcome to the mailing list :)

Katrin

Am 27.10.2015 um 18:42 schrieb John Sterbenz:
> Hi!
> 
> My name is John Sterbenz and I am exploring joining the Koha community as
> my library examines its needs in a post-physical collection world.
> 
> In May of 2013, we had 150,000 physical items across two facilities and six
> primary collections, with access to around 400,000 electronic titles.  By
> July 2014, we had exactly 215 non-circulating physical items that fit in
> less than three average-size bookcases,with continued access to the
> electronic collections.  Nearly all of our electronic collection access is
> provided by aggregators like EBSCO and ProQuest and electronic book
> packages.  There is no more circulation of any sort, no need for patron
> records (we handle remote authentication via EZ-Proxy), and only a handful
> (ten) of print serial receipts--all annuals.
> 
> We ran an Innovative ILS from 1992 until this year.  I was hired by my
> current library back in 1992 to work in it given my background in
> retrospective conversion cleanup and was named its administrator in 1998.
> Given our new reality versus what Innovative wanted to continue to charge
> us for the one product we would actually need, the decision was made by
> administration to shut down the system and not replace it, causing me, my
> Technical Services staff, and the other systems librarian here fits.
> 
> Therein began my examination of open-source solutions, which had actually
> begun around a year ago when I saw the writing on the wall.  Unfortunately,
> this examination wasn't considered to be a priority by anyone but me, and
> there were far more pressing issues to handle.  After a number of failed
> attempts since last October, I've gotten Koha 3.20 installed and configured
> on a Debian jessie VM and will get it to a "proof of concept" stage with
> our own records for others here to view before making a complete commitment
> to it.  While I haven't made a final decision to make a go of this on my
> own or call on the expertise of one of the companies that offers support
> for Koha in various ways, I expect that unless I decide to do the former
> that I will not get approval to proceed.  There are other open-source
> options for me to consider, of course, but from discussions I've had with
> others, Evergreen is essentially "too much" for what we need and Kuali, at
> this point, is a wildcard that requires further examination but also
> demands much more of my time than I can provide right now even with the
> promise of its ERM component.
> 
> While we have lost a lot with the effective shutdown of our old server
> (especially the loss of ERM functionality), I've been very pleased with my
> examination of the breadth of features available "out of the box" on Koha,
> including things that our Innovative implementations never supported.  No
> matter what happens with a public-facing interface, I'm going to use Koha
> to maintain a "legacy catalog" of what we did once have so that my staff
> and I can continue to answer questions about a collection we no longer have
> and exists only through the records and ancillary historic data I've
> exported from the old Millennium server.
> 
> I'm sure I'll have questions but I also hope to be able to contribute back
> to this community in one capacity or another in due time.  I look forward
> to "meeting" and interacting with this group!
> 
> John
>