Tribute to Koha Development

by Todd Goatley-Seals on Nov 10, 2014

Hello Koha-ians,

I wanted to take a moment to sing some praises of our wonderful Koha Integrated Library System and acknowledge those groups who made it so great! In my opinion there isn’t enough mentioned about the libraries and library folks and their contributions in development that have made Koha so great. The “Innovators” and “Early Adopters” groups are the librarians who originally saw theincredible potential, immediate usefulness and unbridled freedom of Koha and were drawn to its benefits. In the tech world the innovators and early adopters are the individuals who must have all of the newest technology straight away. This group started using Koha in the beginning years between 2000 to 2005 and many of the developments that went into Koha during this time paved the way toward the full featured and highly adaptable system Koha is today! The next stages in adoption belong to the “Early Majority‚Äù and “Late Majority‚Äù groups. These individuals comprise the majority of technology users and are the folks who enjoy technology but will wait for the innovators and adopters to test the waters before jumping in.

Fortunately, with the tremendous amount of interest, development and growth Koha has experienced in recent years it is no longer in the innovator or early adopter stages. The momentum Koha has experienced in the past 4 to 6 years is due in great part to the steering of the “innovators” and “early adopters”, but now Koha is benefiting from the inevitable “Early Majority” with developments and increased use by this group of users being nothing short of incredible! The result of all the accumulative Koha developments have enabled library folks worldwide to speak comfortably of Koha in conversation and refer to it as an adoptable option over proprietary ILS’s. Koha and its developments is free to the world and has made the incredible leap of acceptance into mainstream ILS’s (against the suppressive efforts of the proprietary vendors) and it’s winning on every front!

Koha allows libraries to fully evaluate their true options by comparing a free, complete and robust ILS offering inexpensive developments and a vibrant international community to a costly proprietary solution with a slow and expensive development model and lack of community. I’m curious, which one do you feel better serves its community and patrons? If you consider the multitude of libraries using Koha with great success and the research they did before choosing Koha you may find yourself asking, “what am I waiting for‚Äù? I did just that. Then I took myprevious library system Washoe County Library System from (sounds like Sympathy) and with the support of ByWater Solutions put it onto Koha. It has been nothing shy of fantastic in every way!