Howard County Library Chooses Koha
ATHENS, OH--October 3, 2007--LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries, announced today that Howard County Library in Columbia, MD USA, has selected LibLime's Koha ZOOM Appliance solution as the library's next integrated library system. Koha is the first and most advanced open-source integrated library system.
In choosing Koha ZOOM, Howard County Library is proving once again why they are widely known as a leader among libraries. The six-branch library has approximately 1 million items in their collection and circulates close to 5 million materials each year.
Howard County Library has been paving the way to open source for libraries since 2005 with their deployment of Linux and other open-source applications. Open-source applications are first choice for the Library, due to the robustness and flexibility of the development model. "Howard County Library is committed to using open-source software whenever and wherever it is appropriate," says Amy De Groff, the Library's Head of Library Technology Services, "Moving to an open-source ILS was a natural choice for us."
De Groff says that the desire to steer the direction of their own technology was at the heart of Howard County's decision to move from their proprietary ILS to Koha ZOOM: "Koha was less expensive than other ILS vendors, will allow us to use existing hardware, and is operating-system independent. Koha allows us to provide services to our customers and make our own decisions about the software we run on our desktops -- other ILS options required us to deploy software they want. We prefer to use taxpayer dollars for collections and other core services -- such as our hardware and popular classes, seminars, and workshops."
Howard County chose LibLime's turnkey Koha ZOOM Appliance solution as well as ongoing support. "LibLime's commitment to superior customer service matches our own," says De Groff. The solution includes hardware selection, installation and configuration, data migration, training and ongoing technical support.
About Howard County Library
Ideally situated between Washington, DC and Baltimore, Howard County ranks fourth in the nation as “Best Area to Live” (Money magazine). Reasons include a public library system ranked among the finest in the nation, an exceptional school system, and an outstanding community college. As partners in education, Howard County Library offers a collection of one million items; award-winning children’s classes, signatures initiatives, and seminars; and cutting-edge technology. Howard County’s highly educated, diverse community of 300,000 people visited the Library 2.1 million times last year borrowing five million items. More than 90 percent of residents hold library cards.
For more information about Howard County Library's involvement in the Koha project, please contact Amy De Groff, Head of Library Technology Services (tel: 410-313-7985; email: degroffa@hclibrary.org). The library's website is: www.hclibrary.org
About Koha
Since it was first put into production in early 2000, Koha has enabled new realities of open access, affordability, and free innovation for hundreds of small and medium-sized libraries around the world. Koha has lived up to its name, which means ‘Gift’ in the Maori language of New Zealand. From the outset, many libraries understood the power of this gift. They downloaded it, they installed it, they changed it, and they contributed their solutions back to the library community.
Several companies around the world support Koha, providing libraries with a full array of services including installation, migration assistance, data integrity testing, staff training, software maintenance, support and customization. To learn more about what services are available visit http://koha.org/support/.
About Koha ZOOM
Koha ZOOM represents a generational leap in Koha's development. Notably, it includes a powerful search engine based on Zebra, a high-performance indexing and retrieval engine. Koha ZOOM's search engine can read structured records in practically any input format (eg. email, XML, MARC) and allows access to them through exact boolean search expressions and relevance-ranked free-text queries. It supports large databases (more than ten gigabytes of data, tens of millions of records) as well as incremental, safe database updates on live systems.
To try out Koha ZOOM for yourself, visit LibLime's demos:
About LibLime
LibLime is the global leader in open-source solutions for libraries, with a mission to make open source accessible to libraries. Rather than sell software licenses for static, hard-to-customize software products, LibLime educates libraries about the benefits of open source, enabling them to make choices about how best to provide their communities and staff with better technology services. LibLime then facilitates implementation of open-source in libraries by providing outstanding development, customization, support and training solutions--solutions tailored to each library's needs. For more information, see http://liblime.com.
Press Contact:
Tina Burger
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(888)Koha ILS (564-2457)
tnb@liblime.com
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