[Koha-devel] Fwd:KOHA - AN OPEN SOURCE SUCCESS STORY

[Saiful Amin]

Greetings,

Here's an review published in Library Link newsletter in the Library
Technology section.(http://www.emeraldinsight.com/librarylink/technology)

Regards,
Saiful


KOHA - AN OPEN SOURCE SUCCESS STORY

Brenda Chawner
Victoria University of Wellington

In 1999, Rosalie Blake, Head of Libraries, Horowhenua Library Trust (HLT),
in rural New Zealand, faced a dilemma. The software used by the HLT to
handle the day-to-day transactions (everything from lending books to
reserving items to buying new material to paying fines) was 12 years old,
and no longer being developed by the company that developed it. In
addition, the network it used was not expected to be Y2K compliant,
meaning that it would need to be replaced.

She began the usual practice of issuing an RFP (request for proposal) for
a replacement system, but quickly realised that more modern software would
not only be expensive, but it would also incur significantly increased
running costs for faster telecommunications lines. One of the issues
people in rural New Zealand face (along with their counterparts in other
parts of the world) is low-quality phone lines that don't support
high-speed Internet connections. Though these are slowly being upgraded,
installing a better line just for HLT was going to be very expensive (5
times higher than the current system).

For a relatively small library system (3 branches currently online, plus
one operated by volunteers), this would have a significant effect on the
amount of money available to buy resources for library patrons. Was there
an alternative?

Rachel Hamilton-Williams, of Katipo Communications, Wellington, thought
there was. Rather than using Windows clients, why not do something that
was based on the Internet? Telnet could be used to provide a simple and
fast interface that could work over an ordinary phone line, and a web
browser could be used for other things.

Katipo submitted a proposal to develop a new system for HLT, based on a
fully open source development platform (Linux, MySQL, and Perl), and
recommended that HLT release the software as open source as well. This was
for two main reasons - first, to give HLT a form of insurance if anything
happened to Katipo, and second, because Katipo is primarily a web
development company, not a software marketing company. The software would
be called ‘Koha’, a Maori (New Zealand’s indigenous people) word meaning
‘gift’.

HLT accepted the proposal, and the hard work started. For four months in
late 1999, Katipo staff worked with HLT staff to design and develop the
system, with the goal of having the core functionality available on the
first day of business in 2000. They made it, and Koha became the worldÂ’s
first open source library management system. It won 2 awards in a single
week in 2000 (the 3M Award for Innovation in Libraries and the ANZ
Interactive Award, Community/Not for Profit Category). Koha was released
in 2000 as open source software under the GNU public license, and is
available from Sourceforge
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=16466.

But how well has the idea of an open source library management system
worked? There is now an active group of developers on four continents
adding new features to Koha, such as improved support for the MARC
formats, templates to make the installation easier, and porting the
interface to other languages (Polish, French, Italian, Spanish, plus
interest in several others). The 'kaitiaki' (a Maori word meaning
'guardian') is Pat Eyler, who lives near Seattle, Washington. Koha 1.2 was
released in early June 2002, and Koha 1.4 (incorporating MARC) is planned
for later this year. Another project is underway to prepare better
documentation for Koha.

Steve Tonnesen, Network Technician for Coast Mountains School District,
British Columbia, Canada, is a Koha convert. In his own words:

‘Tried it. Was broken. Fixed it. Love it.’

In the fall of 2000, one of the elementary schools in the district
approached Steve with a problem. They had been using an Apple II computer
with a label printer for printing out library sign out cards, book
pockets, and spine labels for the books in their library. Inexplicably,
this system had failed (Apple II computers were first introduced in 1977),
and they wanted something to replace it.

A quick search of the Internet turned up a project called Koha that
claimed to be the first open source library automation program. Steve
downloaded Koha and tried to get it working. It took a fair bit of
fiddling, but he managed to get it up and running within a couple of days.
There were definitely some issues that needed to be worked out.

Because Koha was originally developed for the HLT, there were a lot of
‘features’ in Koha that were very specific to them. Because Koha was
released under the GPL, he had full, legal access to modifying the source
code, and began to do so. He rewrote the Circulation module so that it
could support multiple user interfaces and created a Graphical User
Interface and a Web interface for the Circulation module in addition to
the original console interface. He also wrote up a script that allowed
Koha to import MARC records either singly or in batch mode, and added a
Z39.50 client so that librarians could search for MARC records from other
libraries.

After Steve had the first school set up using Koha, word got around that a
new option was available. There had been a lot of talk about standardizing
all the schools in the district on one proprietary library automation
program in order to make technical support less troublesome. The problem
with this idea always came down to cost. Proprietary library automation
programs are not cheap, and the budget of a typical elementary school
simply cannot support one.

Soon Steve had three schools using Koha as their only library automation
program and a few others using Koha as an OPAC on top of their proprietary
products (which charge an additional licensing fee for every search
station).

Recently, when two of the schools using Koha were closed down due to
budget restraints, the librarians requested that the proprietary library
automation packages in the schools they were moving to be replaced with
Koha! Cost is obviously not the only issue. These librarians actually like
Koha.

Steve contributed his enhancements back to Koha, and, in a nice
demonstration of the benefits of using open source software, the HLT is
now using one of the improved interfaces to the circulation module in the
main library.

In August 2002, the Nelsonville Public Library in Ohio announced that it
would migrate to Koha over the next year, and Stephen Hedges says "We
needed the freedom to change things, to change the code if necessary,
because the types of things we want to do are not going to appear in
commercial library software for years" (BiblioTech Review, September 2001,
http://www.biblio-tech.com//btr11/S_PD.cfm?DO=A&ArticleID=408&issueno=21&XSection=BTR%5Fbusiness)

For more information about Koha, see:

http://koha.org/index.html

You can see the HLT implementation of Koha's OPAC (online public access
catalogue) at: http://opac.library.org.nz/

Rachel Hamilton-Williams was recently interviewed about Koha on National
Radio (New Zealand), and you can hear the interview at:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/digitallife/index.html.

For a more general overview of the open source software development model,
see:

Bretthauer, David (2002) ‘Open Source Software in Libraries: An Update’.
Library Hi Tech News 19 (5):3+