[Web4lib] [Publib] "Homemade" Catalog

Sat Jun 19 13:07:55 EDT 2010

Renata Dyer wrote:
> Also, KOHA became quite big in recent years and you can relatively easily
> find help form either community of suers or a commercial company such as
> the LibLime.

If you are interested in Koha, for a small library, the open source
version is the one I would recommend.   Liblime recently announced
that they plan to migrate all their customers to one of their own
versions of Koha, so you would have to go elsewhere if you wanted to
use the official open source version.  .Liblime will only be offering
Liblime Enterprise Koha (LEK) and Harley, another version with a
separate development track.

The library I work for is in a group that is involved in the
development of the Liblime Enterprise "fork" of Koha.  LEK development
seems to be a  hybrid of the open source and proprietary ILS models.
It has the buggy software and development headaches seen by beta
testers of open source software, with the cost of a proprietary ILS.
LEK lacks some features that you might expect in an ILS,  such as
stopwords and the ability to click on a subject heading to produce a
search of the full heading.

The support from Liblime improved this year when PTFS bought the
company, but unfortunately the major problems with the Enterprise Koha
software remain. LEK code is currently private, so it's effectively
proprietary software and no other company offers support for that
version of Koha.

There is another version Liblime offers called Harley. The code for
Harley was recently released, so the 'vendor lock-in' may not be an
issue there, but I don't know whether it is any better or worse than
LEK as to missing features, bugs, and other peculiarities.  If you use
any Koha version other than the official one, you're going to be
giving up some of the support from the user community that is one of
the appealing features of open source software.

If you're automating a small library with Koha, you'll probably be
better off if you set up your own Debian server and install the
official open source version of Koha.  If you can't run your own
server but want to use Koha, consider one of the vendors that support
the community Koha version.  That way, you won't have to be so
dependent on the vendor for support, and can more easily migrate to
another vendor if you find one that better suits your needs in the
future.

The open source Koha community moved to a new website, but search
engines haven't quite caught up with this change. If you want to use
the current open source version of Koha you can download it from:
<http://koha-community.org/download-koha/>

-- 
Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Riverdale, NY 10471
stacy.pober at manhattan.edu

>> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] [Publib] "Homemade" Catalog
>> To: Sharon Foster <fostersm1 at gmail.com>
>> Cc: learnrt at ala.org, T is For Training
>>        <tisfortraining at googlegroups.com>,      web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org,
>>        nexgenlib at googlegroups.com,     publib at webjunction.org,
>>        web4lib at webjunction.org
>> Message-ID:
>>        <OF2691CB5A.5037ED0A-ONCA257736.007F14C6-CA257736.00804410 at hcourt.gov.au>
>>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>>
>> Stephanie,
>> I know this slide is old but you may find it interesting:
>> http://www.slideshare.net/vimal0212/open-source-library-management-systems
>> .
>>
>> Also, KOHA became quite big in recent years and you can relatively easily
>> find help form either community of suers or a commercial company such as
>> the LibLime.
>>
>> I think LOC will provide MARC records free of charge - not sure how you
>> can automate the system; maybe you should consider an LMS with Z39.50
>> functionality that will enable you to do copy cataloguing on the go.
>> Meaning you will need to open one of the public z39 opacs; perform your
>> search for ISBN with a scanner and then when a record is identified you
>> revise, make changes and save to your LMS.
>>
>> Good luck!
>>
>> Renata Dyer
>> Manager, Systems and Electronic Services
>> High Court of Australia Library
>> Canberra, ACT 2604
>> ph: 02 6270 6916
>>
>>
>On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 4:35 PM, Stephanie Zimmerman <slzimm1 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> (Please excuse cross-postings)
>
> One of my coworkers was awarded a grant and is required to organize a
small
> library at a local Youth Intervention Center.  Here's what she is
asking...
>
> "As part of the grant we?re receiving from United Way, we?ve agreed to
> organize the YIC library.  We were hoping to create documentation of
> everything the YIC owns.  Rather than enter this into a spreadsheet on
our
> own, we were wondering what kind of free library software is out there?
I
> have heard of some for MAC that are not free, like Monster Delicious ?
where
> you use the iSight to scan ISBN and it loads all the information (title,
> author, publication, etc.) into a program that looks much like iTunes.
Do
> you know of anything free for a PC that we could do something similar,
but
> with a normal scanner like we use for checking out library books?  Like
> perhaps we could scan ISBN?s and it would bring up all the information
into
> a program?  We would use this information to make quality book purchases
for
> the future ? by seeing what topics we need more of and so on?"
>
> I did some research on Library Thing but don't see a way to scan the
books
> in which would save a lot of time.  Does anyone know of any free or low
cost
> way to do such a thing?
>
> Thanks for your time!
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Stephanie Zimmerman
> Training Coordinator
> Library System of Lancaster County
> 1866 Colonial Village Lane, Suite 107
> Lancaster PA  17601
> phone:  717.207.0500 x 1281
> fax:  717.207.0504
> email:  szimmerman at lancasterlibraries.org
> website:  www.lancasterlibraries.org
> Training Blog:  http://lslctraining.blogspot.com
> _______________________________________________
> Publib mailing list
> Publib at webjunction.org
> https://lists.webjunction.org/mailman/listinfo/publib
>
>