St. Johns County Library System is Live on Koha and Aspen Discovery with ByWater Support

by Elise Aiello on Mar 12, 2024

ByWater Solutions, America’s forefront provider of Open Source library technology support, announced that the St. Johns County Library System is now live on the Koha ILS with Aspen Discovery and ByWater Support.

ByWater Solutions completed the migration of over 164,000 bibliographic records from Horizon providing the library with customized implementation and training for their open source solutions.

The customized Aspen Discovery can be viewed here: https://sjcpls.aspendiscovery....

Jae Bass, Manager of Support Services at St. Johns County Public Library System
recently commented on the migration:

“ByWater Solutions has been an incredible partner since we joined their team. They have gone above and beyond answering our questions and helping make staff comfortable with Aspen and Koha. We are so proud of what we have accomplished during this transition and are pleased to be providing our patrons with an enhanced level of service.”

About St. Johns County Public Library System

In 1874, St. Augustine opened the oldest library in Florida as a “subscription library.” The library was called the St. Augustine Free Public Library. Patrons gave money to help buy books for the library, and there was no charge to check out items.

By the 1970s there were three independent libraries in St. Augustine, Hastings and Mill Creek serving the residents of St. Johns County. Through the hard work and dedication of many supporters, especially the members of the Association of American University Women, a Library System was born.

On September 27, 1977, the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners voted to establish a Library System for the County, along with a Library Advisory Board. Within 10 years a new 15,000 square foot Main Library would be opened, followed in coming years by the construction of five more branch libraries and the addition of two bookmobiles. The growth of St. Johns County has been mirrored by the growth of its Library System!

Read more at https://sjcpls.org/about/

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 eContent and other third-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. It also improves relevancy and ease of use, provides native reading recommendations, displays all formats of titles within one result (record grouping), and much more. With included features like web builder and mobile app (Aspen LiDA), Aspen was created to give users an improved experience over other Discovery systems, with less impact on library budgets.

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