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One of the things I learned at the ALA Annual Conference was that the Salinas Public Library has signed with LibLime to manage their move to the Koha ZOOM open source ILS. They have also contracted with LibLime to host their system. They thus join a growing number of SirsiDynix Horizon customers leaving their orphaned ILS for open source solutions,
SirsiDynix's dead-ending of Horizon, coming at a time when LibLime has attractively enhanced and packaged the increasingly mature Koha system, and Evergreen approaches feature-completeness, seems to have provided the open source movement in libraries with a golden opportunity.
The Santa Cruz Library System in California announced they have selected the open source Koha Zoom integrated library system to replace their aging DRA Web 2 ILS. Working with Koha support vendor LibLime, the SCPL expects their new system to go live in the Fall of 2008.
The SCPL has a central library and nine branches, with an annual circulation of about 2 million items.
Hundreds of other libraries will face the choice of how to replace their aging, dead-ended proprietary ILSs over the next few years, and congrats to the SCPL for choosing an open source solution!
Koha support and developer company LibLime announced they've succeeded in adding some impressive new features to the open source Koha library automation system they maintain for the Nelsonville Public Library, namely a new web services module that uses OCLC's xISBN and LibraryThing's ThingISBN to link records for various editions of works.
Would-be readers will now see an "editions" tab that will allow them to see if other editions of the work they're looking for might be available. Another interesting point is that the module allows a library to set a point to automatically regulate usage of xISBN (Which is only free for the first 499 queries per day).
For twenty-five years this has been a glaring flaw in OPAC design, so congratulations to OCLC and LibraryThing for providing practical means to overcome it, and also for LibLime, Nelsonville, and all the good Koha folk out there, for building a way to fix it. Now if only the other parties at the table could take the hint!
SirsiDynix's dead-ending of Horizon, coming at a time when LibLime has attractively enhanced and packaged the increasingly mature Koha system, and Evergreen approaches feature-completeness, seems to have provided the open source movement in libraries with a golden opportunity.
