LibLime Upgrades "Koha with Class": Free Hosted Koha for Library Classrooms Worldwide

Koha with Class provides library school classrooms with up to five hosted installations of Koha, free of charge. The project is designed to give future librarians hands-on experience with library automation software and open source. Any college or university offering a program in Library and Information Studies/ Technology can participate.

The Koha with Class Initiative was first launched in January of 2007 and has been used by over 50 library classrooms worldwide.

Participating classrooms will now get Koha 3.0--the latest stable version of Koha-- when they request Koha with Class installations. Previously, Koha with Class installations ran Koha Version 2.2.

Koha 3.0 features of interest to LIS professors and students include:

1. Faster and better searching with Zebra
2. Better tools and utilities, such as a batch marc import tool
3. Cleaner user interface, including a more user friendly staff interface
4. Loads of new features including lots of improvements to acquisitions, serials and cataloging

Also new is the Koha 3.0 User Manual, which LibLime created in-house and has made available to the larger Koha community. It is available to all Koha with Class users as well.

"The last 12 months have been a really high-growth period for our company," says Joshua Ferraro, CEO of LibLime. "We're happy to reaffirm our commitment to the Koha with Class Initiative by announcing the upgrade as well as a new streamlined process for handling KwC installation requests."

LibLime is accepting new applications. If you're interested in having free Koha with Class installations for your classroom, you can read more about the project as well as fill out an online application at LibLime's Koha with Class Initiative webpage:

http://liblime.com/projects/koha-with-class/

About Koha 3.0

Koha 3.0 is the next-generation release of the award-winning Koha open-source integrated library system. Notably, it includes a powerful search engine based on Zebra, a high-performance indexing and retrieval engine. Koha 3.0's search engine can read structured records in practically any input format (e.g., 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 3.0 for yourself, visit LibLime's demos:

http://liblime.com/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

Vice President, Marketing LibLime

(888)Koha ILS (564-2457)

tnb@liblime.com