"Never say never again" by Rosalie Blake Horowhenua Library Trust was on Catalyst by Contec Data Sytems, it was never a windows based sytem. Tthe company ownership had moved to Singapore. It was not being supported anymore. They knew the system wasn't Y2K-compliant, and they realized it no longer fit their needs. HLT also knew that buying a new system would cost them a lot of money up front and would require capital improvements they couldn't afford to make (up to $1000 communication lines and gear to support the new system).They wanted to keep with their $1 a day technology connection courtesy of Telecom.
In 1999, HLT made a momentous decision. They were using a 12-year-old integrated library system (ILS) that was no longer being developed they need a new library system. They had be advised to never hire any some to write a programme for you, cost to much and ends up becoming obsolete and not supported. They convinced their Council they need a new library system by 1 Jan 2000 as the present one would not cope with Y2k. This was approved by Council.
The approached Katipo and after much discussion they suggested that if they did write a programme it would involve a lot of testing and that they should release it open source under a GNUPLto prevent obsolence. In september 1999 Katipo systems were hired to write a programme for HLT ready to start in Jauary 2000
Koha was developed during the fourth quarter of 1999 and went into production on January 1, 2000. The first installation went live in January of 2000 and it was the first open source integrated library system There was a brief flurry of work on the system, and it was released to the world early that year. Koha won two awards in 2000: the 3M award for Innovation in Libraries and the ANZ Interactive Award (Community/Not-for-Profit Category).
It didn't take long for Koha to cross the Pacific. In the fall of 2000 the rural Coast
Wethen went to the Massey Library on the Horowhitu campus to have a look at the Horowhenua Library Trust website and Library catalogue.
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1 comment:
Great write up!
One comment I wanted to make was that Koha scales up too, some examples from libwebcats
Plano School District in Texas, 1,200,000 volumes. 1,000,000 annual transactions
National Library of the Philipines, 1,678,950
Delhi Public in India, 1,416,609 volumes 1,177,015 transactions
And one of my favourites
Biblioteca Nacional de Venezuela with 7,131,660 volumes
If you want to know more about Koha, the international Koha conference this year is being held in Wellington.
http://www.kohacon10.org.nz
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