I am excited to announce that we just completed our Request for Proposal process for an ILS and have made the decision to move from Sirsi Dynix to Bywater Solutions Koha! Koha is an open source software and has many different features and advantages that haven’t been offered by Sirsi. Rather than being on a staff client, we will working in a web environment to serve our customers. In the coming weeks I will be sharing more specific details with you, but for now here is our general timeline.
In July, we are going to begin sending data from Sirsi to Koha so they can start mapping it. This means they have to see how our current data will fit into the data fields in Koha such as item types and locations. During this time, Daniel will be cleaning up old records in Sirsi so we have the most accurate catalog possible once we move it over to the new system. In August I will be visiting department meetings to share a more concrete timeline, training plan, and answer any questions you may have.
Koha will create a test server for us in late September to begin playing with. Any functions that we perform on the test server will not affect any real time data or transactions within Sirsi. On October 15th the Koha folks will be here for a three day training. The first day of training will be working with managers and Circulation staff to really dig into the Circulation functions. The second day of training will be for Technical Services to learn about Acquisitions, Cataloging, and Serials. The final day of training will be for System Administrators and Reporting. At that time, I will be working with Andrew, Joanna, and Kayci to come to each location to provide extensive training to all public services staff throughout October and November.
I found out over the weekend that Koha will work with Bibliocommons after all, so there won’t be a change to the OPAC. I know we all love Bibliocommons so this is great news!
Our projected GO LIVE date from Sirsi to Koha will be Monday, December 17th. At that time we will stop using Sirsi and perform all transactions through Koha. It will work the same with our self checks and AMH machines so that workflow shouldn’t change.
Changing our ILS is a big project and every single staff member is affected. The RFP Committee realizes this and this decision took a lot of time and critical thinking. The advantages of Koha are that we can create our own reports, work with a community of other Koha libraries on developments that we would like to see for our library, and an increased level of support. Open source software is really the future of libraries and I’m excited that we get to be one of the first libraries in Colorado to work with one.
Please email me if you have any questions!
In July, we are going to begin sending data from Sirsi to Koha so they can start mapping it. This means they have to see how our current data will fit into the data fields in Koha such as item types and locations. During this time, Daniel will be cleaning up old records in Sirsi so we have the most accurate catalog possible once we move it over to the new system. In August I will be visiting department meetings to share a more concrete timeline, training plan, and answer any questions you may have.
Koha will create a test server for us in late September to begin playing with. Any functions that we perform on the test server will not affect any real time data or transactions within Sirsi. On October 15th the Koha folks will be here for a three day training. The first day of training will be working with managers and Circulation staff to really dig into the Circulation functions. The second day of training will be for Technical Services to learn about Acquisitions, Cataloging, and Serials. The final day of training will be for System Administrators and Reporting. At that time, I will be working with Andrew, Joanna, and Kayci to come to each location to provide extensive training to all public services staff throughout October and November.
I found out over the weekend that Koha will work with Bibliocommons after all, so there won’t be a change to the OPAC. I know we all love Bibliocommons so this is great news!
Our projected GO LIVE date from Sirsi to Koha will be Monday, December 17th. At that time we will stop using Sirsi and perform all transactions through Koha. It will work the same with our self checks and AMH machines so that workflow shouldn’t change.
Changing our ILS is a big project and every single staff member is affected. The RFP Committee realizes this and this decision took a lot of time and critical thinking. The advantages of Koha are that we can create our own reports, work with a community of other Koha libraries on developments that we would like to see for our library, and an increased level of support. Open source software is really the future of libraries and I’m excited that we get to be one of the first libraries in Colorado to work with one.
Please email me if you have any questions!