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Huntsville-Madison County Public Library Chooses ByWater Solutions' Koha Support
10/31/2014
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Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com
Huntsville-Madison County Public Library Chooses ByWater Solutions’ Koha Support
ByWater Solutions, an open source community contributor and America’s forefront provider of Koha support, announced today that Huntsville-Madison County Public Library (HMCPL) is the first public library in Alabama to go live on the Koha integrated library system.
ByWater Solutions has completed the migration of HMCPL’s 12 branches, half a million items and nearly 170,000 patrons and will be providing ongoing Koha Support and Hosting services for them. Their custom mobile-friendly OPAC can be viewed at http://catalog.hmcpl.org.
Sherry Sakovich, Systems Librarian, shared her experience with ByWater:
“Working with ByWater is an absolutely wonderful experience and their highly skilled staff are always there if we need them. They’ve worked with us to customize the software to our unique needs, all as part of our basic contract. The staff at ByWater Solutions genuinely care about our well-being, and are readily available through a variety of means, allowing us to work the way that best suits our needs. It’s not unusual for the CEO to answer the helpdesk phone or be available online to chat! This is a remarkable company that works in a straightforward and transparent manner, which is very refreshing.
ByWater Solutions provides us with outstanding support. Everyone on staff is so talented and dedicated to the work that they do. Countless times they have provided us with instant solutions. If an issue needs a patch, the fix is implemented instantly without any interruption to our services!”
Aaron Sakovich, IT Services Manager, spoke of choosing Koha supported by ByWater:
“Switching to Koha was not something we did lightly — we’ve been planning the transition from our legacy ILS for several years and went to great lengths to ensure we made the right choice that would take us forward into the 21st century. Our specialists went through an exhaustive 2 year process to evaluate the options available to us. Throughout the entire effort, Koha supported by ByWater Solutions stood out head and shoulders above the rest of the industry, in areas including support, features, technology, flexibility, and robustness. The concept of not paying for a software license, but paying for support, was new and refreshing to us, and cinched our technical decision to go with ByWater Solutions.
Working with ByWater is a game-changer for us. With costs shared by other partners in the community, our limited budget dollars are leveraged to get us big feature changes that we’d never be able to consider on our own. Coupling that with speed that the rest of the Koha Community moves in introducing new features or making fixes available will keep us at the forefront of ILS technology on a stable platform, while providing a best in class service to our patrons.”
Ann Marie Martin, Communications Director, spoke of using the Koha public interface:
“As I approached Koha, my perspective was more like a patron’s than a member of the HMCPL staff. I’m a displaced newspaper reporter, not a librarian, but I found Koha easy to use and easy to explain to our patrons in our publicity materials.”
About Huntsville-Madison County Public Library:
The Huntsville-Madison County Public Library system is located in Madison County, Alabama, in north-central Alabama. We are a 12-branch system, not including our Bookmobile and Outreach services. We serve all of Madison County.
Our collection comprises more than half-a-million items, and we circulate those items more than 2 million times every year to our patrons. We provide online services, training, an extensive digital collection, public-use computers, free Wi-Fi service, meeting spaces, and much more. For more information about HMCPL, please visit: http://hmcpl.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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