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Appomattox County Libraries Choose ByWater Solutions' Koha Support
6/10/2014
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Nathan Curulla
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Appomattox County Libraries Choose ByWater Solutions’ Koha Support
ByWater Solutions, an open source community contributor and America’s forefront provider of Koha support, announced today that the Appomattox County Libraries in Appomattox and Pamplin, VA are now live on their installation of the Koha integrated library system.
ByWater Solutions has completed the migration of Appomattox County Libraries’ approximately 15,000 patrons and more than 45,000 items and will be providing ongoing Koha Support services. Their custom mobile-friendly OPAC can be viewed at http://www.jrjml.org:8080/.
Rob Morrisette, Library Director at J. Robert Jamerson Memorial Library, spoke of his library’s decision to choose Koha:
“We are a small public library system, and we strive to provide the best library service we can to our patrons while working within the constraints of our limited budget. Towards this effort, our library has had a great deal of success in the implementation of free and open source software solutions. F/OSS solutions make sense for our library for several reasons, which of course includes the fact the software itself is free of charge, so we are only left to pay for technical support, which is much more reasonable than also having to pay for licensing of proprietary software. We have essentially cut our ILS support costs in half with our decision to move to Koha, which is no small thing for a library with a very modest operating budget.
But it is also very important to us that the philosophy of free and open source software, and the sense of community among users, mirrors much of our philosophy as a public library. We share the belief in free and equitable access to information, and that by sharing our knowledge and experiences with one another, we all benefit. With these things in mind, it was a very natural choice for us to decide to leave our old proprietary ILS, and go with the open source Koha and purchase support from ByWater.
At the beginning of our migration project, we even contacted other companies that offered support for Koha and other open source ILS applications to get an idea of support costs and options, and we were advised by those other companies to look to ByWater for support of our Koha implementation, as they had the most expertise in supporting only the Koha ILS.
We have been very pleased with our new Koha ILS, and with the support we have gotten from ByWater. They were extremely helpful with our migration and customization, and worked with us every step of the way. And since we have gone live with Koha, the responsiveness of the ByWater support team has been just great. And of course, the Koha ILS is web-based, so it is platform independent, and it is extremely feature rich and customizable, offering many features that some well known proprietary products don’t even have. We are very happy that we made the move from our old proprietary ILS to Koha, and that we went with ByWater Solutions for our technical support.”
About Appomattox County Library:
Appomattox County Library had its beginning in 1936. It was a circulating library that contained 7,226 volumes for whites and 6,045 volumes for black patrons, deposited in fifteen loan stations in private homes throughout the county. When the library opened it was affiliated directly with the county schools. The Appomattox County Public Library system is headquarted at 157 Main Street. Appomattox, VA 24522 with a branch library in Pamplin, VA. Access to the libraries is free to all. County residents can obtain a library card to check out library items. In addition to these items, people visit the library to use print and electronic reference resources, access the Internet, and enjoy state-of-the-art Wi-fi service. For more information about Appomattox County Library, please visit: http://www.appomattoxcountylibrary.org/
About Koha:
Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha’s impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.
Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies,XHTML, CSS and Javascript,making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit: http://koha-community.org/
About ByWater Solutions:
ByWater Solutions is a full service, high quality support and implementation company dedicated to providing libraries with a lower cost, more advanced level of support for their ILS than a traditional proprietary solution can offer. ByWater Solutions has a proven track record in first rate Koha implementation and support with library systems of all sizes. Our highly ranked, comprehensive support is what sets our company apart from any other vendor in the industry. Partnering with ByWater Solutions to support Koha not only lowers the cost of implementing and maintaining an ILS, but more importantly empowers libraries by giving them the flexibility and freedom they deserve. For more information please visit: /
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