Newman Theological College Sopchyshyn Family Library is Live on Koha and Aspen Discovery with ByWater Support

by Elise Aiello on Mar 7, 2025

ByWater Solutions, America’s forefront provider of Open Source library technology support, announced that the Newman Theological College Sopchyshyn Family Library in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada is now live on the Koha ILS with Aspen Discovery and ByWater Support. ByWater Solutions completed the migration of over 48,700 bibliographic records from the Symphony ILS providing the library with customized implementation and training for their open source solutions.

The customized Aspen Discovery can be viewed here:

Jim Derksen, Library Director at the Sopchyshyn Family Library, recently commented on the migration:

The library’s migration to Koha/Aspen went live on Mar 3. This is an exciting time for us as we moved from a shared system to our own ILS and Discovery Service. We look forward to providing our borrowers with the advantages of a new search interface and easier access to research resources. We also anticipate the continued development of library services, which we can now tailor to our specific needs."

About the Sopchyshyn Family Library

In 1999, funding for a library and seminary residence at Newman Theological College was provided by Wilfred, Helen, Clinton, and Geneva Sopchyshyn. The Sopchyshyns were committed to Catholic Education, and spent their careers serving Alberta's Catholic schools. Their generosity is esteemed as a legacy of faith and hope for future generations at the college and seminary.

​The library and seminary residence, were originally built at the former location of Newman Theological College and St. Joseph's Seminary on St. Albert Trail. However, due to the development of the Henday Ring Road, the college and seminary moved to their newly built facilities on the campus of the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton Pastoral Centre. The Sopchyshyn family continues as the library's namesake.

Read more here: https://sopchyshyn.newman.edu/

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 the first-rate implementation and support services with library systems of all sizes for the Koha, Aspen Discovery, Metabase, and Libki.

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.

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, HTML5, 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 Aspen Discovery

Aspen is a full-featured Discovery System that integrates with e-content and other 3rd party providers, giving your patrons comprehensive access to all of your materials in one place. Aspen combines your library catalog with e-content, digital archives, and enrichment from all major third-party providers improves relevancy and ease of use, provides native reading recommendations, displays all formats of titles within one result (FRBR), and much more.

Aspen was created to give users an improved experience over other Discovery systems with less of an impact on library budgets. Aspen Discovery also includes a companion APP, Aspen LiDA, that gives your patrons an intuitive, user-friendly way to manage their own library experience. For more information about Aspen please visit https://bywatersolutions.com/projects/aspen-discovery.

For More Information

Elise Aiello
Partner Engagement Specialist
ByWater Solutions
bywatersolutions.com
Phone:(888)900-8944