Open Source ILS Team: Summary Report: March 2009

The PALS office formed an Open Source ILS Team in May of 2008. The team is co-chaired by Linda Richter and Dee Nolan. There are seven other members of the PALS staff on the team as well as Stephen Elfstrand, the director of PALS.

The main purpose of this team is to explore the feasibility of using an Open Source ILS product. This open source product could be used for some segment of our consortium, as well as other new libraries that might be interested in an open source product. The team has focused primarily on two open source products; Koha and Evergreen.

In the spring of 2008, Galen Charlton from LibLime (Columbus, OH) came to the PALS office and presented a demo of Koha. Also in the spring of 2008, Bill Erickson from Equinox (Norcross, GA) came to the PALS office and presented a demo of Evergreen. During these demos we learned about the functionality, architecture, scalability, and future development plans for each product.

The teams other activities have included:

Members of the Open Source ILS Team have been monitoring the mailing lists and web sites for Evergreen and Koha. (Dee joined Evergreens Facebook)
Members of the team attended the MINITEX demos on Koha and Evergreen in the summer of 2008.
Members of the team attended ALA and sessions related to Open Source.
Becky Bell from WALDO came to the PALS office on October 1, 2008, and gave an update on the Koha implementation at WALDO. This implementation is of particular interest because it includes academic libraries.
Stephen attended the Open Source Round Table meeting sponsored by MINITEX.
The PALS office had a table at MLA in Bloomington on November 19 and 20, 2008, where we showed the new open source products we are looking into.
Two members of the team attended OLA (Ontario Library Association) on January 28-31, 2009, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
Conference calls were set up with libraries that are currently running Koha or Evergreen. Two completed conference calls have occurred with SITKA and the Univ. of Prince Edward Island. Both are using the Evergreen product. Besides our contact with WALDO who is using Koha, a conference call was held with INCOLSA on March 31, 2009.
A conference call was held with Susan Buchanan from LibLime on March 18, 2009, and we are in the process of obtaining a price quote from them on the cost of migration of data to Koha.
Equinox has also been contacted regarding a price quote on migration to Evergreen.
Three members of the team will be attending the Koha Conference 2009 in Plano, Texas, on April 16 and 17th.
Four members of the team will be attending the Evergreen Conference in Athens, Georgia, on May 20-22, 2009.

The goal of the Open Source ILS Team is to choose an open source ILS product by summer of 2009.