Meeting with vendors
Well word must be out one of the vendors not selected came by to visit. Curious as to why we didn’t select their system and why are we going with KohaZOOM… A little surprised I think since he hadn’t really heard of this product. I outlined a few reasons:
- Need to move
- Plano ISD is interested in Opensource
- Plano wants web-based tools
- David looks at the backend of software as well as what the kids are going to see. Authority control, full MARC editor
- Customizations as Sponsorships.
He gave me a ball park as to what the cost for a district our size would be then I asked about the “other” type items “subscriptions” well no quotes were discussed at that point.
He’ll be back to see how we are doing…
Show me the Money!
We are working on getting the check cut along with PO’s done. Make sure that when you do this you know how you are going to pay for it and what restrictions you may have on the funds. What can you pay for out of that account etc. Then also understand the process going through purchasing and how your quote needs to be worded and how the invoice should be worded. Integrated Library Turnkey system or line items with different accounts for the PO etc… Training, support, installation, hardware etc… We are doing a Turnkey solution hosted on site. LibLime won’t begin the project until they get the first check in their hands.
They have guaranteed me that the Dell box they have specd will support all 67 schools with 10,000 circ between 8-9 am daily. Along with over 300 pac users at one time. During back to school there is a lot of training that happens and lots of people on the pac stations.
Next blog… Websites we need to build/change/migrate! We have lots of pages that we have built into the old automation system for maintenance that need to be moved! Yikes!
What have we done! repost
OK so our current public access has been in place now for oh… 5 years! We have built everything around the library catalog and searching for books…
Guess what – the catalog is about to change.
All of the links and tabs have to be migrated from the proprietary system to…???
Can we provide direct access to each school location without having to select the location before doing a search? Granted we have to select a school, but from there it should be showing just what I own.
OK so I subscribed to bookjackets through the old vendor… Now I have to do that direct… Who are the players? Guess what… Baker and Taylor is a LOT cheaper than what I was paying and Koha 3.0 has already written links to their catalog to use this service!!! SCORE!
Barcode tracking oh yes… We will have to pay directly to Computype to track barcodes once we switch over… Again minor compared to other items we have to handle, but something to remember!!!
Eventually we will have to work with all of our book vendors to change the holdings tag we will need the information delivered in as well. – MUCH LATER…
What should the databases look like for student access and how are we going to provide that to them? Are we still going to drive the students to the Library catalog first and have to click another link to get to the databases… I SAY YES… But we will see.
Tomorrow is another day…
After much thought and consideration the library I work for has decided to move on from where we are.
Our district has decided to use Koha ZOOM as an open source Library automation system and contract with LibLime for support.
We budgeted some money for some sponsorships of items we would like to see the system do.
Some points taken into consideration:
1 – who are the players in the market for schools
2 – District goal that we move to web interfaces only
3 – District is interested in opensource solutions
4 – District has other opensource items currently
5 – future of existing system and proprietary systems
6 – Direction in which other automation systems are going
7 – Cost -
After reviewing and looking at trade shows There were only about 3 systems that made a cut. One was Koha and the beauty of that was I could actually play with it on LibLime’s site. I subscribed to the 2 list serves and watched… Then I bit the bullet and installed Debian and Koha 3 x on a system I had sitting around. I was able to set it up and load all of my 250,000 MARC records on my own and in about a month had an operational system.
Problems with just going cold turkey:
1 – how do I get the circ data over
2 – need servers
3 – I don’t know enough perl or sql to run this without help
4 – when the building librarian calls and can’t checkout a book who am I going to call for help to determine if it is our network, the server or a software glitch
5 – with 67 locations I don’t want do be on the river without a paddle.
6 – I like ham… and a paycheck.
OK so I showed some of the pac niceties to people around the office. Shared some circ info check functionality and Koha it is… My main concern was a full MARC editor but guess what… Biblio’s is part of Koha 3.0… Nothing more needed…
Next post – ok it was approved now start planning for the next 5 months!
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