Where goes Koha?

Yesterday I participated in my first IRC session in 14 years.  The occation was a meeting with Koha users and developers on the formation of a Koha foundation. The background is that the US company LibLime has decided to fork Koha, and establish an “Enterprise” edition.  The reasons behind are hard to understand, and for me who just joined the Koha community it seems like a huge departure from the idea of open source, and actually a departure from the idea of sharing that libraries stand for as well.

Since I first discovered Koha a few years ago I have followed the development through information from LibLime and thought they did a wonderful job of promoting open source and still survive as a company by selling services instead of products.  I have held this model up as a possible avenue of survival for norwegian ILS vendors and generally shouted out LibLime praise.

Since the news of the LibLime fork I have tried to understand the implications and how it will affect my library and installation. Fortunately Libriotech who implements our Koha installation and is our main service provider has clearly stated that they stand by the open source version of Koha and that they will not depart from the development and contribution model that has brought Koha to the point where it is today.

LibLime has brought upon its head a lot of dissapointment from developers around the world, and quite a few librarians react to this news as well. I am thus joining the choir of disaproval:-)

But yesterday I participated in a discussion that made me worry about the future of Koha. The purpose of the discussion was to establish some sort of organization that could take ownership of the Koha development and brand and hopefully avoid the situation we have today where LibLime owns the domain name koha.org and in the US have registered a Koha Foundation.

So the community is at a loss. What do we do now? Try to make a foundation that can take care of all the stuff that comes with an organization (for that is in reality what the development and use of Koha is turning into) or just try keep things going the way they have so far?

I know one thing, IRC is not a god format for discussions like this. I know that most of the participants where used to IRC from discussions and meetings on the development of Koha, but for a newbie like me, or any other “normal” librarian, it was a bevildering stream of text flashing by at a speed it was hard to keep up with. I tried to contribute but felt that what I wrote was injected into a totally different discussion than the one I responded to and it was hard to answer questions when things moved so fast.

I also noticed a distinct disinclination to try to organize things or try to build some sort of traditional structure. I mentioned that I thought we should approach IFLA and see if the only truely international library organization could possibly help in this case, but the response was that IFLA is to slow and to bureaucratic. I have thought about this and realize that the culture of open source and the culture of IFLA are probably so different that it would be a bad fit for both. So scratch that idea for now. Maybe later if IFLA re-invents itself as an  organization oriented towards individual members and with a more tie-less structure.

Having initiated and led the Norwegian Library Association special interest group for ICT in libraries (SIKT) I have experience enough to know that starting a foundation or association for Koha is going to take a lot of work, and a more hierarchical structure than we have today. I also think that the users, i.e. the libraries, should be in the driving seat, not the developers and open source enthusiasts. Librarians are pretty good at organizing things, and Koha exists for the libraries and their users. It would probably be a good idea if some librarians in one geographical area, that actually can meet and discuss f2f, develop a proposal of alternatives (not more than two or three) for how a Koha foundation/association could be set up, and then present this to the Koha community for discussion. Then we must have a meeting, an IRL meeting, that establishes the entity in a way that is recognizable to librarians around the world as a point they can approach for information and help in all questions relating to Koha. Yesterday I felt that the discussion was too fragmented, the options not clear and the realities of our situation too complex to do justice on IRC.

Marshall Breeding have put forth a suggestion on how to organize Koha as foundation and even if I find his thougths interesting I cannot see that his proposal would work as an international entity the way I see  neccesary for the needs for my library. Maybe we need to develop regional structures that all contribute to an international structure? An European Koha association, an US, an Asian etc.? There seems to be so many questions that it will take a while to sort them out. And sorting out messes is what librarians do so well. So, why not let the professionals do that, and let developers and companies contribute and play an auxillary role? I totally agree with Marshall Breeding in that we need to have libraries as the driving force behind the development here, for the simple reason that libraries survive and stay where individual companies and developers come and go.

Filed under: IFLA, ILS, Koha, Library Associations 2.0, worries , foundation/association?, organizing

One small step for a librarian, one giant leap for the library

Today I sent the resignation letter to our current ILS-vendor. The point of NO return has passed:-)

It promted another round of “OMG why am I doing this?”  It is in many ways a leap of faith. We are the first library in Norway to switch to Koha, the translation is still not completely done  and who knows what bugs and surprises we will get when we go live sometime in October.  This would of course be true independent of the system we switch to, commercial or open source. The important thing for me, who initiated the whole thing, is that with Koha we are looking forward, we will get more features than our current ILS can deliver or develop in the forseeable future, and we introduce the concept of open source into the norwegian library systems marketplace.

Norwegian libraries need to embrace open source for many reasons. The formal reason; that the government now requires public institutions to consider open source when choosing software, the financial reason; that open source means you can test and try out systems without initial costs and that the implementation cost is way smaller than any other system on the norwegian library system marketplace, and finally the ideological reason: open source embodies many of the same values that libraries are funded on, sharing, equality, access and community.

To further the understanding of open source in the norwegian library community we have initiated the unconference Free and Open Libraries in Bergen 12.-13. november 2009. (Conference wiki – Norwegian only). The key-note speaker will be Nicole C. Engard from LibLime in the USA, and we will have Nicolas Morin from BibLibre in France and of course our own Magnus Enger from Libriotech who both will contribute. Even though Koha is a major theme for this conference we will try to cover as many aspects of free and open software as possible.  The key-note speaker for day two will be Bjørn Venn from FriProg, the norwegian centre for free software.We will have a Open Software 101 session for those who want to learn the basics, we will let people discuss everything from programming to ideology and try to make the point of how important and useful open source is to libraries.

Filed under: Conferences, ILS, Koha, Norway , conference

Back to Koha

After an adventure filled holiday on the west coast of sweden (think shipwreck and serious bruises) I’m back at work and starting the wonderful adventure of a migration to Koha. The Koha patch that was absolutely neccesary to implement Koha at the naval academy was quickly built by the wonderful people at BibLibre at the specifications from our Koha support company Libriotech and ourselves.. It is now possible to add multiple copies in one go. This was neccesary as we also have the teaching collection in the ILS and in that collection most entries have between 50 and 150 copies. Too much work to add manually. Now you can just imput number of copies and the first barcode in the series and then stand back and see the copies with barcodes be added automatically. You still have to barcode the physical copies though:-/

There seems to be so many desicions to make, mostly on issues we should have resolved in our old catalog, so it is basically clearing up old sins of omission, and that is really a good thing. All systems should migrate once in a while to clear out the dust and clutter:-)

One of our tech guys here at the naval academy (have I told you what a great bunch of guys we have at our tech office, they RULE!) wondered if I wanted to have a mobile version of Koha so that we could use the HTC Magic phone with Android to scan barcodes while on the go? No longer lugging heavy laptops around in the library or going back to the desk to check a barcode or record information. Mobile computing FTW!

Filed under: ILS, Koha , android, barcodes, mobile computing, patch

To host or not to host, that is the question

Just a few days into the process of moving from one ILS to another I discover that another library in California is a bit further along the same way that I am now on. Great to know I’m not alone.

One question that came up on the Koha migration blog yesterday was one we also had to consider when we decided to move to Koha. Should we host the ILS at our vendor, or should we keep the system in-house?

We had one of our IT-persons with us during the discussion of this issue, and fortunately, I’m happy to say, our IT-person was completely open to the idea that our vendor could access and trouble-shoot on the in-house server. The deciding factor from our point of view was that the price for hosting and in-house was the same, and  lightening the load for our IT-people is a high priority for me. So we go for the hosted solution, but always with the option to move to one of our servers if we want. This is the preferable solution for our vendor as it simplifies upgrading and control of multiple installations.

It will be interesting to see which type of libraries migrate to Koha here in Norway. My prediction is that secondary education libraries and small academic and special libraries will lead the way. Most of these libraries will probably prefer a hosted solution if the price is right:-)

Filed under: ILS, Koha , hosting, Koha, migration

Five reasons to go for Koha

My main reasons for choosing Koha is:

1. Custom interface – the fact that I can customize the OPAC interface and the administrative interface is really important for me.

2. Development and implementation cycles -It is also great to follow the development from question to implementation. The openness and insight is one of my main reasons for leaving the proprietary system world behind.

3. LibraryThing for Libraries. The announced close ties between Koha and LibraryThing for libraries is just what I want for my library. The richness of tags and comments will make my catalog so much more valuable for the students and employees of the naval academy.

4. Cost – Yes I know open source is free as in free kittens, not free beer.  But to change a system usually costs a bundle. With Koha I could both test locally and experiment before I made a choice. The desicion was more informed than it has been at any other time in my career (and I have changed systems about four times in different workplaces). And I’m not tied to one service provider, I can move my Koha installation anywhere I like and not be stopped by “business restrictions”.

5. Community – The Koha community is worldwide and welcoming. Just look at the comments on the first Koha post   I love the idea of open source and the community around Koha. That I have something in common with librarians in New Zealand, USA and France is just awsome.

Filed under: ILS, Koha, Library 2.0 , Koha

Koha FTW!

Maybe I should change the name of the blog? Koha will probably be the main theme for this blog in the next few months. After almost a year of information gathering, thinking and discussing the library I work in have decided to go for Koha as our new ILS.

Our old system, Tidemann (norwegian only), is not a bad system as such, but it was not as good as Koha on some of the features I think a good library system should have. And of course the development cycle of Koha is so much more rapid than any commercial system can achieve.  I especially love the user interface of the Koha OPAC and how we can adapt it to our own needs.

From now on this blog will be my main chronicle of the switch to Koha.

Filed under: ILS, Koha