[Koha] Introduction

[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

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John E. Sterbenz, Jr.
Associate Librarian
Manager, Technical Services, Collections, and Library Automation
701 Tappan Street, Rm. K3359
Kresge Business Administration Library
The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 48109-1234

TEL: (734) 764-5746
FAX: (734) 764-4162