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 > _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org [email protected] https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
