Open hearts, Open doors, Open minds,
Open Source


TLA Annual Conference 2019 Chattanooga Convention Center
April 26, 2019

Margaret Brown
Marcia Butler
Williamson County Public Library

Opening hearts and minds to changing ILS was the

1st step

Considering a new system ...

• Discovery & ILS contracts ending 4/1/2018 deadline to break contract(s)
• Discovery not liked or used by anyone
• Expensive existing ILS had academic focus and poor Customer Service

We considered options ...

• Stay with Sierra? - with or without Encore?
• New Discovery Layer?
• New ILS? - Proprietary?
• Open Source?

What is Open Source Anyway?

In general, open source refers to any program whose source code is made available for use or modification as users or other developers see fit.
Open source software is usually developed as a public collaboration and made freely available.

https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/open-source

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We Looked at Discovery Layers

• Marmot/Pika
• Bibliocommons
• EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS)

and Ils demos

• Koha supported by ByWater
• Koha supported by Equinox
• Evergreen supported by Equinox

we traveled

• To Huntsville Madison County Public Library
• Spent a day with their IT department and migration team

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story of koha

“It gives freedom to the libraries to mold the software to their wants and needs rather than just using what someone sells them.”— Nathan Curulla, CRO,

ByWater Solutions
https://koha-community.org/about/

ByWater Solutions Support

• New model of support https://bywatersolutions.com/about-us
• Committed to Open Source
• Customer Service is their only product
• 24/7 toll free calling - direct access to CRO
• 30 minute response to phone calls - 20 minutes to tickets
• Voicemails generate emails to EVERYONE

the bywater solutions team

customer service

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we are still in process

• Went live 8/27/18
• There have been some bugs
• 7 million lines of code freezing system
• Keyword searching did not work initially
• Too many carousels strained the system
• Still tweaking

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Some things that went well

• Customizable - we can fix it ourselves
• Statistics - few minutes not several days
• Web based - many people in same record - accessible anywhere
• Community - Development & Support
• Savings - including III migration
• Customer Service

what we would change

• More internal preparation
• Do not do this within 1st year on the job
• Follow recommended training plan
• Have a thorough understanding of IT infrastructure - checklist
• Better internal communication

Would we do it all over?

• Yes!
• Annual savings $39,662.00
• We would have had to pay to migrate to remain on our old system
• NO VENDOR LOCKIN

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