[Web4lib] Koha

[Mark Kille]

Terran,

I had an okay experience with LibLime through 2008, into early 2009 or so. Then I started getting discouraged by them on price and by their move towards marketing an enhanced/not-entirely-open-source version of Koha. (At the time, my understanding from them was that they would offer both open and "closed" versions, but my experience with other vendors made me nervous that in a couple years, the transition to "closed" would be complete.) I know the Koha development community has been unhappy with what LibLime has done with their domain name and archived discussions and such--I don't claim to know all the details, but koha-community.org presents at least some of their side of it (vs. koha.org)--but purely from a library services and business model angle, LibLime got my spidey-sense all atingle. I didn't feel like playing the "trust us!" game, so I had us go with Bywater Solutions for hosted Koha instead, and it has worked out well.

Regards,
Mark

*****
Mark Kille
Director, Library and Archives
Naropa University
2130 Arapahoe Ave
Boulder, CO 80302
303-245-4664
mkille at naropa.edu

________________________________________
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Terran McCanna [terrannews at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2010 10:54 AM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Koha

I'm really curious as to where all of this negativity is coming from. In a
previous job, I lobbied vehemently for replacing our existing kludgy and
antiquated commercial ILS that had terrible customer support with something more
flexible and suited to our needs. At the time, Koha was the one I saw with the
most potential, and since the library I was in was not in control of the
institution's IT department, I also lobbied for having it hosted offsite.
LibLime was the clear choice for implementation and hosting at that point, and
out of all of the various ILS vendors I spoke with, they were the most
responsive and forthcoming. Due to many circumstances, I wasn't actually
successful in convincing my library to switch vendors, but I never saw any
hint of potential problems dealing with Liblime or Koha.

 ---
Terran McCanna
Virtual Services Librarian
Clayton County Library System
www.claytonpl.org





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