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 Program Confirmed 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' 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 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 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 eIFL-FOSS Blog list Randy Metcalfe, eIFL-FOSS Program Manager