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ATHENS, OH –September 27, 2006– LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries, announced today that three more special library collections have migrated to Koha, the first open-source Integrated Library System. Recent migrations include the Native Village of Afognak Library in Alaska, USA; the Alaska Statewide Mentor Project also in Alaska, USA; and the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, a resource room at the University of Toronto, Canada.

In addition to the commitment and passion they pour into their collections, these libraries have two other things in common: small budgets and large software needs. Koha offers special collection staff and users a feature-rich ILS, a web-based OPAC, and outstanding self-service tools. LibLime gives libraries a refreshing alternative to the proprietary software model, offering turnkey solutions with all the advantages of open source– including the freedom to customize the look and functionality of their ILS.

For the Native Village of Afognak Library (http://library.afognak.org), the challenge was finding a reliable and evolving ILS to automate their unique and growing collection. Koha’s web-based OPAC was critical to Afognak’s mission — to make their collection of Alutiiq and other Native-related library materials accessible to the Native Village of Afognak’s displaced tribal members.

Vera Benedek, Director at the Native Village of Afognak Library, says “We had talked about open-source (Koha) at the beginning, but didn’t feel we had the technology savvy to pull it off […] as we are technologically and time-challenged, as well as short-staffed. We finally decided it would be more cost-effective to hire LibLime to get us set up and trained on open-source — which is continually being improved and updated –than it would be to go with a commercial product that has additional annual costs and probably would be discontinued in a few years.” LibLime’s ‘hosted’ Koha provides Afognak with an affordable turnkey solution to grow with for years to come.

The Childcare Resource and Research Unit (CRRU) at the University of Toronto is a policy and research facility that maintains a comprehensive resource collection of materials on a variety of topics focused on early learning and child care. CRRU chose Koha primarily for its seemlessly integrated OPAC and staff/administration modules and its impressive self-service tools. Michelle Turiano, CRRU’s Resource Officer explains their decision: “Koha satisfied our two needs–patron needs and administrative needs. It provides patrons with powerful online searching of the most current catalogue (as well as the option to pass their query to Google Scholar or other databases), bookbags and automatic requests for hard copies, and enabled patrons access and administration of their accounts. Administratively, CRRU was impressed with Koha’s robust circulation and cataloguing features — staff would be able to maintain and expand the resource collection efficiently and extensively.” CRRU can be found online at http://www.childcarecanada.org

Alaska Statewide Mentor Project, Childcare Resource and Research Unit, and Native Village of Afognak Library all selected LibLime’s ASP (Application Service Provider) Koha package, in which the entire system is hosted and managed by LibLime. This solution is perfect for libraries without an on-site technical staff to handle server maintenance. “As a special resource collection,” says Michelle Turiano, “we were impressed with LibLime’s ability to work with smaller special collection libraries as well as larger institutional libraries. Their ability to work toward the individual needs and goals of the library was a major draw. With Liblime, we are confident that we will be able to both meet our specialized needs and embrace new information and knowledge technology.”

About Koha

Koha is a full-featured Open Source library management system first deployed in January 2000 at Horowhenua Library Trust. It is currently maintained by a team of software providers and library technology staff from around the globe. Several companies around the world support Koha, providing libraries with a full array of vendor services including installation, migration assistance, data integrity testing, staff training, software maintenance, support and customization. To learn more about what services are available visit http://koha.org/support/. To try out Koha for yourself, visit LibLime’s demos:

• OPAC (public access catalog)
• Staff Client

About LibLime

LibLime’s mission is to make open-source software accessible to libraries.

To that end, LibLime develops and markets affordable and customizable open-source library technology solutions, such as Koha ILS. LibLime also provides full vendor services on these software products including: migration assistance, staff training, and sofware maintenance, support, and development.

Press Contact:

Tina Burger
Vice President, Marketing
LibLime
(888)Koha ILS (564-2457)
tnb@liblime.com

LibLime and the LibLime logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of LibLime. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

I’m really excited about Zebra 2.0 — in particular, the Alvis filter. One of its features is the ability to pass searches and results through pre-defined XSLT stylesheets which can be used to do transformations on the XML (request or result). I can imagine all kinds of ways to utilize this for Koha. It’s certainly going to make template design much more flexible. I’m also excited about the prospect of being able to write a stylesheet to define how field weighting should work (instead of the CCL parser I wrote). This should make it much easier for a library to define how searching should behave.