David Parkes (http://dukedomlargeenough.blogspot.com @daveparkes) and Paul Johnson (http://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/informationlandscape @infoscene) talking about the selection and implementation of open source library systems at Staffordshire.
Institutional committment to ‘open’ – open educational resources, open access, widening participation.
Maturing of open source landscape
Realisation there were opportunities
Business case pretty easy to make economically – costs speak for themselves. However, more difficult to put the ‘risk’ aspect. Institutional IT slightly wary at the start (although now fully on board) – had to work, and learn, with them.
Very quick turn around – March 2010 decision, live with new system in August 2010
Library management systems need to talk to many many other systems on campus – perhaps unusual in this respect. LMS more complex than they realised when they started.
Because on legacy system, with rising costs, felt had less to lose than others perhaps.
In business case not just getting IT on side, but also faculty and students. Needed to understand what they needed from the system – found no particular resistance to moving, but also no particular desire to move.
Some demand for specific things – e.g. mobile interface.
Because of institutional strategy with regards ‘open’, they were able to align business case with institutional strategy. Specified in their tender that they wanted a hosted, open source, system.
Paul describes some issues of implementation – but I’d summarise that this seemed very similar to any system implementation – issues around change of practices, new terminology, etc. etc.
Paul describing how they worked with PTFS Europe on adding ‘rolling loans’ functionality. Some complexities around this, and especially how fines were charged. Despite good progress decided in the end to scrap rolling loans and move to 1 and 2 day loans. The only real impact they could see was slight drop in fine revenue. Generally positive reaction from students.
Hourly rolling loans now available in Koha – but Staffordshire unlikely to go back to this.
Paul stresses before having custom work done, really consider if you need it.
Paul saying how great data migration process was. Had a lot of legacy data – much of it lacking key data for discovery services – e.g. 008 only present in 15% of bibliographic data. They were able to match up with open data from the British Library to increase this to 38% of data.
Staffs use self-service – issues with secure communication between hosted Koha system and self-issue machines on site when using SIP2.
Overall think fair to say Staffordshire very positive about their experience of both PTFS Europe and Koha.