May 2023 Librarian of the Month

by Elise Aiello on May 31, 2023

Every month ByWater Solutions recognizes a librarian that has made an impact on their library and community. We are happy to announce the May Librarian of the Month is Josh Barnes of the of Portneuf District Library in Idaho.

Josh was nominated by Cresta Craner, Director of the Portneuf District Library, who commented:

Our library consortium, LCEI, migrated to Koha about two years ago. During the migration process, Josh became one of the consortium's main subject matter experts. Our consortium consists of eighteen libraries, some of which are multi-branch systems. Josh is the go-to for any and all Koha questions within our consortium. He does this in a volunteer capacity while still maintaining his exceptional work as the Assistant Director and cataloger at Portneuf District Library. He will answer questions, assist, explain, and address concerns for multiple libraries. His expertise in SQL has been instrumental in the ongoing success since our migration to Koha. I often say he's magic (he absolutely hates it when I say this.). His skills with Koha are not magical at all though. He has taken the time to dig in, learn the system, learn the schema and metadata in order to help everyone. He writes beautiful reports, and that's not something you would normally describe as beautiful. He does though! We can express a need, and within no time, he'll create a report for not only what we need, but also supplemental data which gives us greater understanding. He is always willing to share this information with the rest of the libraries in our consortium and with the Koha community as a whole."

Thank you, Josh, for all you do! And Congratulations!

Do you have a staff member at your branch that you would like to nominate for ByWater's Librarian of the Month? We love to feature library staff members that are impacting their patrons, are valued members of the library team, and who go the extra mile in the open source and library community. Email us and let us know who they are, brag about all their accomplishments and we'll share it!

About ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions is a full-service, high-quality Open Source support and implementation company dedicated to providing libraries with a lower cost, more advanced level of support for their systems than a traditional proprietary solution can offer. ByWater Solutions has a proven track record in first-rate implementation and support services with library systems of all sizes for the Koha ILS, Aspen Discovery, Folio LSP, Coral ERM, and Libki PC Management.

Our highly ranked, comprehensive support is what sets our company apart from any other vendor in the industry. Partnering with ByWater Solutions not only lowers the cost of implementation and maintenance of OSS but more importantly empowers libraries by giving them the flexibility and freedom they deserve. For more information please visit https://bywatersolutions.com.