[Koha] Library System - good system, LC problem

[Steven F. Baljkas]

Wednesday, April 21, 2004    15:05 CDT

Greetings, Peter,

Just a 'quick' reply to your message inquiring about Koha, that others on the listserv will hopefully augment with their wisdom.

First, I (and many others) think Koha is a great system. It is extremely versatile and compared to other ILS that one would have to purchase at significant cost, it is astoundingly good.

In terms of technical support and further development, the prospects are at least as good. Most questions to the listserv receive a response within 24 hours, usually less. The community is very good at lending a hand with advice.

Development is continual and the nice thing there is that, being an open source product, your library could direct further development along lines that would give you features you wanted simply by financing the programming and/or appealing to the Koha community to see if some nice volunteer could effect the change you wanted.

As people write in to the listserv with different questions and requests for features, many are added to the programmer's 'bug' lists for future work. If you look back at the archive of message, you can see how much has been accomplished in just one year (something we should all be applauding and thanking the developpers for)!!.

There are only 2 significant issues that I can see in terms of your library adopting Koha.

The first is that it would be preferable if there were a member of the systems administration team who were familiar or willing to familarise him- or herself with the program so that you would have technical support closer to home.

The second -- and this is really the major one -- is that Koha is NOT at present compatible viz. LC classification numbers. I am not sure what the progress has been in the last several months towards that. I know that the understandable focus of the developpers has been on achieving a stable 2.0 release, which is now done.

In the meantime, perhaps somebody on the development side could reply with a guesstimation on how long it might be until LC-numbers are usable within Koha. Also, if there is a library that uses LC classification that has found a way around this issue, it would be helpful to let the community know.

Hope this lengthy response helps a bit, Peter. I think your library would ultimately benefit greatly by adopting Koha.

Best wishes in your automation/migration project,

Steven F. Baljkas
library tech at large
Koha neophyte (and cheerleader!)
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Peter Gichiri 
  To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz 
  Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 4:09 AM
  Subject: [Koha] Library System


  I am an assistant librarian working at Strathmore university, an up-coming university in Kenya, Africa. We are scouting for a library system that will address all the aspects of the library. We are using the Library of Congress systems of cataloging books. We hope to have a system that is compatible with other departments of the university for we share enough information with other department. The university has a well laid computer network.

  Is Koha a suitable system and what are is the best way ahead.

  Peter Wanyoike Gichiri
  Ass. Librarian
  Strathmore University


  ---
  Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
  Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
  Version: 6.0.663 / Virus Database: 426 - Release Date: 20/04/2004
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.katipo.co.nz/pipermail/koha/attachments/20040421/201552cf/attachment-0001.htm