Two Libraries Join HELM and Choose ByWater Solutions' Koha Support

by Jessie Zairo on Nov 19, 2019

ByWater Solutions, an open source community contributor and America’s forefront provider of Koha support, announced today that HELM (Higher Education Libraries of Massachusetts) an association of Massachusetts college libraries in public higher education has added 2 more libraries to their HELM catalog. Massasoit Community College and Mount Wachusett Community College joined the group this year.

ByWater completed the transition of the libraries' 76,000 plus holdings from Evergreen & Symphony ILS and is providing ongoing support services to the library. The HELM Catalog can be viewed at: https://catalog.helmlib.org/.

About Massasoit Community College

Massasoit Community College was founded in 1966, but its origin can be traced to a 1947 study by the State Board of Education which determined the need for a low tuition, state supported system.

Read more at: https://www.massasoit.edu/about-massasoit/index

Recently, Massasoit Community College commented on the migration:

From May to June of 2019, Massasoit Community College Libraries migrated from a public library consortia to the Higher Education Libraries of Massachusetts, which uses KOHA (supported by ByWater). ByWater was able to extract all item and user records from the Sirsi Symphony ILS and map all of that data into the new KOHA system. After our two-day training with ByWater, Massasoit library staff was overheard saying, “The ByWater trainers took what could have been a tedious and overwhelming experience and made it engaging, useful, and productive. I now feel so much more confident about this migration and about the support we will receive going forward.” That sentiment has proven true. As the library has worked out kinks and issues, ByWater has walked them through every step of the way in finding the solutions that create a better experience for everyone.

About Mount Wachusett Community College

Mount Wachusett Community College is a student-centered school serving 29 cities and towns in North Central Massachusetts. MWCC was established 56 years ago, has an enrollment of 3,724 students and offers more than 70 degree and certificate programs.

Here is the Mount Wachusett Community College Library vision statement:

The LaChance Library is the college’s academic commons where individuals investigate ideas, challenge assumptions and create knowledge.

Read more at: https://mwcc.edu/about-mwcc/

Recently, Mount Wachusett commented on the migration:

Mount Wachusett Community College LaChance Library is live with Koha since July 1, 2019. ByWater and FLO (Fenway Libraries Online) collaborated to migrate the Library’s 40,000 plus holdings into the HELM (Higher Education Libraries in MA) catalog successfully. The MWCC Library migrated from CWMARS and the Evergreen ILS to HELM and Koha.

About HELM

HELM (Higher Education Libraries of Massachusetts) is a growing consortium of Massachusetts public higher education libraries that share an integrated library system, allow direct borrowing of materials, and collaborate on professional development opportunities. HELM was formed to develop and sustain cooperative initiatives and to enhance library resources, systems and services for all member libraries.

Read more at: https://libraries.flo.org/HELM-Public/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 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.

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.

For More Information

Jessica Zairo
Marketing & Outreach Coordinator
ByWater Solutions
bywatersolutions.com
Phone:(888)900-8944