Plano Independent School District Chooses Koha and LibLime
ATHENS, OH --December 2, 2008-- LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries announced today that the Plano Independent School District (ISD) in Plano, Texas has selected a Koha ZOOM appliance solution for their next integrated library system.
Encompassing 68 schools, Plano ISD is nationally recognized for its
education excellence. Twenty-four Plano schools have captured the
prestigious National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence honor, awarded
by the U.S. Department of Education. Several Plano ISD schools have
received the honor twice.
Plano ISD has selected LibLime as
their partner for support and training of their Koha library system.
In addition, LibLime is responsible for the data migration of their
current collection of over 1 million items.
”We planned to
upgrade or replace our current library automation system during the
2008-09 school year due to its announced end of life in terms of future
enhancements,” says David Schuster, Library Technology Coordinator for
the school district. “After evaluating existing proprietary library
systems along with a variety of open-source options, Koha ZOOM became
the obvious choice due to its flexibility and promise of long-term
development and support,” says Learning Media Services Director Diane
Lutz.
LibLime became a key component in the Plano ISD decision
due to its proven ability to add specific functionality to the Koha
application and its willingness to work closely with the district in
developing identified enhancements.
Many developers contribute
to the improvement of the Koha ZOOM open-source code, so Plano ISD is
confident that issues will be resolved and changes made quicker and
more efficiently than with proprietary counterparts.
”The
decision to seek out a web- based, open-source automation system was in
line with our district's desire to use open-source whenever available,"
stated Mary Hewett, the district’s Executive Director for Instructional
Technology.
About Plano Independent School District
Plano ISD (http://www.pisd.edu)
serves the residents of approximately 100 square miles in southwest
Collin County. This area includes the City of Plano, northern portions
of cities of Dallas and Richardson, the city of Parker and parts of
Allen and Murphy.
Plano schools have been the recipient of
several state and national honors, including the National Blue Ribbon
Schools of Excellence honor, awarded by the U.S. Department of
Education. Plano ISD recently received outstanding scores on the 2008
accountability ratings report given by The Texas Education Agency,
scoring "exemplary" on 18 out of 25 academic indicators.
The
school district's website and online instructional center have captured
several top state and national awards for innovation in design and
user-friendliness.
Plano ISD has also pioneered “University
Ready”, collection of online tools and resources designed to engage
students (prek-12) and parents in preparing for post-secondary
education.
About Koha ZOOM
Koha ZOOM 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 ZOOM'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 ZOOM 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
LibLime and the LibLime logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of LibLime. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
