[Koha] An RFP for work on Koha

[Pat Eyler]

I'm not sure if anyone here is interested in responding to this, but I'd
guess you're all interested.  This is a copy of an email I've been sending
to various mailing lists today.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Nelsonville, Ohio, Public Library has recently announced that they
will be migrating to Koha, a GPL'd library software system
(<http://www.koha.org>) which is written in Perl.  They have decided to
contribute to the ongoing development of Koha and have released an
RFP to solicit bids to work on full MARC support for the 1.4 release,
the RFP is available at
<http://pate.eylerfamily.org/geek/MARCRFP.txt> (a copy is also
included below).

I'd encourage interested parties to read carefully through the RFP and
to join the koha-devel mailing list
(<http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/koha-devel>).  It may
also be worthwhile to join the #koha channel at irc.katipo.co.nz to
discuss the project in general or MARC support specifically.  If you
know anyone else that might be interested in responding to the RFP,
please feel free to forward it as appropriate.

Further background on Nelsonville's announcement is at
<http://www.linuxpr.com/releases/5053.html>.  For more information,
please feel free to contact me by email at info at koha.org.

thanks,
-pate

Pat Eyler
Kaitiaki/manager
the Koha project
http://www.koha.org


REQUEST For PROPOSAL -- MARC 21 record support for Koha (www.koha.org)

The Nelsonville Public Library invites all interested parties to
submit proposals in response to the following request.  Proposals may
be submitted in any format, but should carefully answer all questions
in the request.  Proposals should be sent to Stephen Hedges, Director,
Nelsonville Public Library, e-mail nelpl at athenscounty.lib.oh.us, fax
740-753-3543, mail 95 W. Washington Street, Nelsonville, Ohio 45764.
Proposals are due no later than 8:00 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
September 30, 2002.  Any responses made in proposals from interested
parties may be incorporated as part of a final agreement.

BACKGROUND
The Nelsonville Public Library is a public library system consisting
of seven libraries serving the residents of Athens County, Ohio, USA,
with 36,000 active borrowers and over 250,000 items in the
collections.  The library has made plans to switch from its current
library automation system to Koha, but only if Koha has certain
required capabilities.  Among these is the ability to store and
retrieve item records in MARC 21 format at the (Full) National Record
Level.

Accordingly, the Library is seeking proposals from parties who are
capable of modifying the current Koha code to provide this capability.
Proposals will be evaluated by a committee of five Library staff
members, and a contract will be negotiated with the submitter of the
successful proposal.

Please note that the Nelsonville Public Library does not expect to
fund the entire development process, but is instead offering a
financial reward to encourage development of Koha to be able to handle
MARC 21 format.  Nelsonville Public Library may elect to share some of
this financial burden with other agencies as it sees fit.

SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS
Nelsonville Public Library realizes that several people/groups may
wish to combine resources to fulfill the requirements of this RFP.
The Library is aware of the special nature of Open Source software
projects, which encourages wide participation in the development
process, and is thus amenable to proposals which divide the work
between parties.  In such a case, however, the Library prefers to
receive only one combined proposal, with payment going to only one
person or organization.  If no acceptable combined proposal is
received, then the library will entertain partial proposals from
several persons or organizations that can demonstrate a plan to
coordinate their efforts toward achieving the intended goal.

SELECTION CRITERA
Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of cost, qualifications of
the programmer(s), time to delivery, ease of integration of the
proposed code into the current Koha software, and ease of upgrading
the delivered software to incorporate future changes to the MARC
formats.

The Library also intends to share information from proposals with the
current Koha development team, in order to better judge the
compatibility of the proposals with the overall Koha development
plan.

REQUIRED INFORMATION
- How will you modify current Koha tables and/or scripts to accomodate
MARC 21 National (Full) Level Record Requirements?  (See
http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/nlr/).  Please provide enough
detail so that the committee may judge the viability of your plan, but
do not submit sample tables and/or scripts.
- Who will undertake this work?
- What are the qualifications of the person(s) doing this work?
- How have you been involved in previous Koha development?
- How long will it take to complete this work?
- How much will you charge for this work? (in US Dollars, please)
- How will you coordinate your work with the existing work on MARC for
the 1.4 release of Koha?