Motlow State Community College Revitalized Digital Space: A Case Study

by Jessie Zairo on Aug 13, 2021

Location: Tullahoma, TN

Library Information: Motlow State Community College is a public community college with multiple locations in southern Middle Tennessee. Motlow libraries are located on the Moore County, Smyrna, Fayetteville, and McMinnville campuses.

Library URL: https://library.mscc.edu/

Koha OPAC: https://motlowscc.bywatersolutions.com/

Library Background

Motlow State Community College's mission is to improve lives through the lasting power of education. Motlow employees, students, and community members have access to a rich collection at the Motlow State Community College libraries.

Each Motlow library offers library orientation and Information Literacy instruction for classes in addition to Microsoft and Google Suite workshops. Librarians also provide course-specific database research instruction to classes.

Case study with Sharon Kay Edwards, MSLS, Director of Libraries
at Motlow State Community College.

I've been so pleased with ByWater's service! Every step of the way through this migration, ByWater's team has been "in the trenches" with us. The training was personable, helpful, and quite frankly, fun! Coming from a consortium where much of our institutional autonomy in the ILS was outside of our control, we're very excited to have full control over our collections, catalog, circulation rules, and well....everything! We've taken this opportunity as a team to build the library we've all talked about for so long—with ByWater's guidance and aid. Although the idea of "migration" was a scary one, it's been a great experience overall, and we're so excited to begin the fall semester with Koha!

Case Study

When did you make the decision to switch to Open Source?

In the past couple of years, Motlow has provided training for its faculty in OER resources. When it came time to renew our contract with the proprietary ILS we were using, we began to think about putting our “money where our mouth is” regarding open access to stand in solidarity with all of the faculty creating and using OER content.

Why did you decide to move to Koha ILS?

Our decision to move to Koha was determined in part by the affordability and in part by the remarkable customer service we receive from Bywater.

How has the cost savings helped your library?

We have been able to allocate funding for EBSCO’s Discovery Service (which integrates beautifully with Koha) and EBSCO’s Stacks to replace Springshare’s Libguides. The Koha, EDS, Stacks combination has revitalized our digital space completely!