[OPLINTECH] [OPLINLIST] Open source state ILS, Evergreen project terminated

[Joe Knueven]

  I agree with Bob, there is no reason why we cannot or should not 
develop and implement a variation on Koha or Evergreen statewide on an 
"in-house" basis.

I agree with Dan that the change over can be a bit daunting, however, 
from what I have seen of open source systems, if the tech people in 
libraries implementing it are open to the idea and willing to develop a 
few skills, they will be able to implement elements of open source, 
without the public or the front line staff ever  being bothered by the 
fact that they are using open source programs.  Case in point, in the 
past six months I have switched Germantown's webserver from IIS on a 
Win03 server to apache on a ubuntu server.  Other than somebody who may 
have been on the site while the one was removed and the other started, 
nobody noticed.  I have replaced a public pc time limit and print 
management system with Libki and a customized version of CUPS.  In many 
ways my staff welcomed this change, because while Libki was a 
considerably less mature product than PCCop, which we had previously, it 
had features we needed that were lacking in PCCop and was easy for the 
staff to use.

Evergreen or Koha could be done in a similar manner, but on a larger 
scale.  There is no reason why it could not be implemented (even 
improved upon) by the talent we have in Ohio for a considerably lower 
cost than what we are all currently paying for closed source systems 
from ILS vendors.  In fact, the beauty of what Bob is talking about, is 
that we would not need to make radical changes to our staff or public's 
behavior, all of our work stations could still be windows, but the ILS 
would be served up by servers that could be considerably less 
expensive.  The turmoil for the staff or public would be no worse than 
any other ILS migration.  (which I agree can be a major upheaval, but 
one that we could make once more and be done with it.  No ILS migration 
5 years down the road when a vendor discontinues a project to start from 
scratch again..)

Something like a statewide Koha or Evergreen based ILS system, 
implemented in-house, is precisely what the library communities in Ohio 
need right now.

After all, money is tight, why spend thousands of dollars with out of 
state companies when we could spend a portion of that money on people 
here in Ohio and get roughly the same product?

Just my two cents worth.  :-)

Joe

Joseph Knueven
Director
Germantown Public Library
51 N. Plum St.
Germantown, OH 45327
937-855-4001