Koha and the eIFL-FOSS ILS Project

Randy Metcalfe, eIFL.net Arnold Hirshon, NELINET

About eIFL.net

• eIFL.net – Dedicated to enabling access to knowledge through

libraries in developing and transition countries• More than 50 country consortia as members

– Building national library consortia– Negotiating licences to electronic resources held by

publishers– eIFL-Open Access (OA)– eIFL-Intellectual Property (IP)– eIFL-Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)

• Working in Africa, Middle East, eastern Europe, and Asia

FOSS Program

• Advocacy of free and open source software (FOSS) use in libraries

• Raise awareness and understanding of FOSS• Facilitate engagement with FOSS development

communities• Undertake projects of special significance to

eIFL.net members

FOSS Champions

• Volunteer country coordinators• Main conduit of information to the program

and to consortium libraries• (Usually) connected to the local FOSS

community• Share experiences, ask and answer questions,

support each other• ILS identifed as their priority concern

ILS Project

• Develop support documentation to aid evaluation of and migration to Koha or Evergreen

• Develop support network across eIFL.net for Koha or Evergreen deployment and use

• Facilitate engagement with Koha and Evergreen development communities

ILS Project: Call for Participation

• Applications for pilot sites from 12 countries• 11 language groups represented• 78% of applicants wished to pilot Koha

Pilot ProgramConfirmed Participants

Koha• Armenia: National Academy of Sciences

Fundamental Scientific Library• Georgia: National Scientific Library• Malawi: National Library Service• Palestine (West Bank): An-Najah National

University Library• Mali: Universite of Bamako, Medicine,

Pharmacy and Dentistry Library

Evergreen• Nepal: Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya• Zimbabwe: Midlands State University

Library

Additional Participants (if funds permit)

Koha• Nigeria: Kaduna State

University• Kenya: St Paul's University

Evergreen• Ghana: Kwame Nkrumah

University Science and Technology

• Lesotho: Lesotho College of Education Library

Project Plan

• Initial workshop training event for all pilot sites in Armenia at end of May 2008

• Koha and Evergreen developers participating• Case studies will be developed for each pilot• Support documentation project using DocBookWiki – final

version to be released in English, French, Russian, and Arabic

• All applicants invited to join eIFL-FOSS country coordinators' email discussion list to ensure knowledge transfer throughout project

Koha in Malawi

Koha seminar: Malawi Library Information Consortium (MALICO)

Photo credits: all photos by Dorothy Eneya, used with permission.

Why Koha?

• Longevity– Koha project began in 1999, current stable release: 2.2.9, version 3.0 in beta

• Localization– Koha is in use world-wide with solid support for a variety of languages

• Community– Koha user and developer email lists are very active, with extensive

documentation available on the Koha wiki

• Support– numerous small companies offer support contracts for Koha

Why Koha vs. Evergreen?the reasons vary significantly

Evergreen• Nepal: staff knew Koha and wanted to broaden their skill set• Serials and acquisitions modules not available for a couple more months• Uses PostGresQL database

Koha • Most familiar ILS for countries that already have advanced use of OSS• Uses MySQL, and many libraries already have experience with it• Complete ILS (important if using an ILS for the first time, e.g., Georgia) • A larger development community = more likely to be able to network with

others in a neighboring region, and to leader and support others • Libraries investing in Koha's future development, and most won’t

migrate to a new ILS for more than a year

Issues of scale not the big factor it might have been expected to be• Koha said have challenges if collections >300,000 volumes• Koha 3.0 uses Zebra indexing, which should resolve many scaling issues

Koha Challenges

• Installation• requires solid Linux administration, MySQL, and Perl

skills

• Community• asking questions on FOSS email discussion list can be

intimidating for those new to it

• Support• most support companies are small and may not be able

to meets needs in eIFL.net countries

Meeting Challenges

• Training event• installation, deployment and localization• Koha developer involved in training

• Community• eIFL-FOSS community could be a stepping stone to direct

participation in Koha development community

• Support• support documentation effort• liaising with regional commercial support

Further Information

• eIFL.net http://www.eifl.net/• eIFL-FOSS http://www.eifl.net/cps/sections/services/eifl-foss

• Blog http://www.eifl.net/cps/sections/services/eifl-foss/foss-blog

• Email list http://www.eifl.net:8080/mailman/listinfo/eiflfoss

Randy Metcalfe, eIFL-FOSS Program Manager randy.metcalfe@eifl.net