Following a Timeline

Last week, Lori Ayre placed a timeline document on Open Source - Open Libraries which we quickly read and then distributed the link to the Task Force. It gave an example of what tasks were involved with migrating to Koha... and what needs to be done when. The timeline goes from 13 weeks out to the "Go Live Day." This document is very helpful and will make it easier to track our progress...or lack of it.

On Thursday, August 19, we had a conference call with Brendan from ByWater Solutions. Those involved were: Carolyn Garner-Reagan (our director), Lori Ayre (Open Source - Open Libraries), Cathi and Jackie. Items discussed included:

• Comparison between Koha and Evergreen - This is another document on Lori's site. We were especially interested in OCLC and Envisionware since we use both of these products. Brendan explained that using the OCLC Connexion client with Koha is very similar to the process we are using with Symphony and we will learn how to do Marc Importing during our training. Compatibility between Koha and Envisionware was confirmed as well, since it is SIP2 compliant. So we should be okay with our 3rd party vendors.


• Since our Task Force is going through policies, we asked about item status. Currently, when a title is in Technical Services for cataloging or on order, the system says it's available, such as "Available in On-Order" which isn't really available. This really confuses our patrons. We wanted to make sure that we can change the wording, if not the status in Koha. Brendan provided some screenshot examples and we are able to do this.


• We were concerned about closing on the "Day Before" going live. We already plan on being closed one of the training days and we felt that another closed day might be unaccceptable to our community. Brendan asked if we were open on Sundays (NO, we aren't) so, BWS will upload the final transactions into our new system on that day. Wow! Excellent customer service!


• We discussed the "Go Live" day. We initially thought the winter holiday period would be good. This won't work for ByWater Solutions. Brendan suggested December 6 or 13 or in mid-January would work better. After consulting with staff, we decided on Monday, December 13 to go live with Koha!


• At three weeks out from the Go Live Date--on Monday, November 22, the Symphony system will be frozen. A final export of the bibliographic database as it exists at that time will be migrated to the new Koha system. Technical Services will have some options...they can double catalog items in both systems so new records appear in both, or not do any new cataloging at all in either system, or catalog into the new system only and hold on to the materials until we go live. (I'm not sure yet what Tech Services will opt to do.) I'm for "just cataloging in the new system".


• We need to try to move all fines and fees to the new system. It had been suggested that we institute a "Fines Amnesty." We don't believe this can be approved during this financial climate.


• Cathi and Brendan discussed the Linux install. I'll let her write about her experience. Cathi will make sure that ByWater Solutions has access to the servers on the week of Sept. 7th.

Jackie

Buy-In

It is very important to have the staff excited about our new ILS and not to dread it. With that in mind, I emailed everyone about the process and that we want their cooperation. I asked that all staff be available for training day(s) and to practice what they learn afterwards. I hope that staff will work with the system for one hour a week - at least.

Then, I set up the Arcadia Koha Task Force. I asked the library supervisors to attend these weekly meetings. I felt that the supervisors could relay this information back to their teams. We began meeting on August 5 from 1:30 to 2:30. I have promised to keep these meetings short -- no longer than one hour. So far we have discussed:

• Project Update


• Training... should we close one of the three days? We decided that we would ask the Library Board for permission to close on the Circulation/OPAC training day, October 6. We plan on using the conference room for the Admin and Tech Services days, and the public Tech Center (with multiple workstations for Circ /OPAC day.


• A brief demo - Cathi gave a little overview of what was covered at our Koha System Admin Workshop.


• Assignments - Weeding, searching, and discards (we don't want to migrate items to a new system if they don't circulate); Review categories, locations, patron and item types, etc (we want to clean up and remove what we don't use); Questions to ask (staff questions that we need to ask ByWater Solutions.)

Jackie

Two Visits

After we notified SirsiDynix that we planned on migrating to a new system, we had a visit on July 6 from David Noll, our SirsiDynix Field Sales Consultant. Dave wanted to know why we intended on leaving Symphony. We discussed our current issues ... and the main problem was the cost of the product and how frustrated we are that the prices continue to climb. Dave informed us that 30% of the libraries that left SirsiDynix for open source software ended up with SirsiDynix again. He wanted us to know that they would welcome us back again if our project didn't work out. He said that they would try to help us if we had any concerns.

On July 26, Cathi and I attended an InfoPeople workshop on Koha for System Administrators. This workshop was held at our Library so it was very convenient. Too bad there were so few participants but it gave us time with the instructor, Brendan Gallagher, from ByWater Solutions. We were given a "hands on" view of Koha.

After the workshop we talked about training here for our Library. It looks like Brendan will be handling our training and that we will be using version 3.2 if Koha. We talked about dates for the training, and "potentially" settled on October 4,5,6. On Monday,October 4, we will discuss System Administration, Reporting and some Linux administration. Tuesday, October 5, will be focused on Technical Services--Cataloging, Acquisitions and Serials. On Wednesday, October 6, the sessions will cover Circulation & the OPAC.

Some of our Library staff are concerned about having the training so early... no time really to practice since they need to keep up with the steady stream of material arriving. However, Brendan advised that staff persons need to practice, use the new system and become familiar with it before going live so the transition will be more successful. After the training, weekly or bi-weekly calls from ByWater Solutions would be made to answer questions that arise. And, if there aren't questions then it was assumed that no one is using the test system...in that case then assignments will be passed out.

Jackie and Cathi

Moving Ahead

We were pleased that our new Koha project was passed by the City Council. This gave us the funds needed for a new server, the consultant's maintenance charge, and training on the new system.

Once July came we were all ready to start... we had the funds, the energy, and enthusiasm. We had discussed the needed server requirements with ByWater Solutions and then we asked our City IT staff to purchase one for us.

The requirements were:

• A Linux server: Debian is what most people use.
• Apache
• MySQL
• Perl
• Root on the server
• A reasonable level of comfort with the command line
• Database administration skills

This photo shows all five of our servers. Our new server is the third black box on the left on the lowest shelf. Cathi's workstation is on the other side of the room.

We received our new server this week from Dell. This included:

• PowerEdge T310 Chassis w/ up to 4 Hot-Plug Hard Drives & LCD Diagnostics
• 4GB Memory (2x2GB) 1333MHz Dual Ranked RDIMM, Memory for 1CPU Platform
• X3470 Xeon Processor, 2.93 GHz8M Cache, Turbo,HT PowerEdge T310
• HD Multi-Select
• No Operating System
• On-Board Dual Gigabit Network Adapter
• iDRAC6 Enterprise
• 16X DVD-ROM, SATA, Internal
• 146 GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5 Hotplug Hard Drive
• RAID 5 - Add-in PERC6i/H700 , 3-4 Hot Plug Hard Drives
• Power Supply- Redundant, 400W

Of course, various cables, monitor, and keyboard were included. Now we need the software. We will be working with ByWater Solutions staff on this.

Jackie

Why Koha, Why Now?

We have been interested in open source integrated library systems (ILS) for a couple of years now. Cathi and I attended the Open Source workshop held at Fullerton Public Library on August 13, 2009. Lori Ayre and Cheryl Gould presented the topic covering an overview of Open Source software... what was available and who is using it. One handout was particularly interesting. "Compare Your ILS Costs to an Open Source Library System (OSLS)." We were blown away with what would be "Free" with an OSLS. This included the initial purchase, additional modules, upgrades, test environment license, SIP licenses, and more. We left excited and decided to pursue our study of both the Koha and Evergreen ILS.

We signed up for Open Source - Open Libraries, and continued to watch the literature. We attended several webinars that Lori Ayre presented. It was at a couple of these webinars that I first heard of ByWater Solutions, our new consultant for the project. Nicole Engard from ByWater Solutions gave a video demo of the OPAC & Circulation, then a demo on Cataloging. The functionality seemed complete.

After learning about each system, we thought that Koha would be a better fit for a library our size. It's primarily for smaller libraries. It went live in 2000, so it's not a "new" product". There are over 1000 libraries running on Koha internationally. The only nerve wracking thing is that there aren't any other public libraries in Southern California using Koha. We aren't used to being trail blazers.

We were definitely concerned about the time it would take for us to be up and running. While Cathi is a seasoned IT professional, she only works at our Library 20 hours a week. We had been warned during workshops that while Open Source software and operating systems might be "free"; first-year costs of migration, conversion, configuration, adaptation, and installation, as well as support in the first year and beyond were not "free" and that we would need to cover these costs.

Cathi and I planned on migrating in the Fall of 2011 but then when our ILS costs continued to rise, we thought "why wait?" We started making plans to migrate in 2010-11. We contacted Nate Curulla at ByWater Solutions and set up a conference call with him and Ian Wells, to allow Cathi, Jackie, and a support tech from City of Arcadia IT staff to ask questions and air our concerns. We were amazed on what would be covered by the maintenance/support contract and at a fraction of the cost. ByWater Solutions would be doing the upgrades, which Cathi has been handling up to this point. We received a quote for migration/installation, training, and maintenance. At that time we merely needed cost estimates so we could add this new project to the City's Budget Proposal for approval by the City Council.

Nate mentioned that there "might" be a grant available with Open Source-Open Libraries to cover some of the costs. I quickly contacted our Library Director, Carolyn Garner-Reagan, at PLA in Oregon. She checked around and made some connections. It turned out that Lori Ayres was looking for a public library in Southern California that was ready to go with an Open Source ILS software....and that was us!

Jackie

We're On Our Way

Good News! We just signed our contract with ByWater Solutions for the migration, installation, training, and maintenance of our new Integrated Library System--Koha. But... Wait! Wait! Perhaps I need to tell you a bit about our Library first.

Arcadia Public Library is a small city library in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County. At this time, we have 161,145 bibliographic records, 200,216 item records, and our annual circulation for 2009-10 was 729,000. We have 61, 025 borrowers, and a staff of 27 full-time and 16 part-time employees.

We have had three different ILS systems in the past 20+ years. We started with Inlex, migrated to DRA's Taos in 2000, and then migrated in 2002 to SirsiDynix's Unicorn. Our current version of Unicorn is Symphony 3.3.0. Our needs for an ILS are minimal. We are a one building library, so no branches. We have only the basic modules...cataloging, circulation, reports, OPAC, and collections. We had considered adding more modules (acquisitions and serials) but never could afford them and, in fact, we felt since we were so small we could do without them.

The past two years have been financially tough for public libraries; Arcadia Public Library is no exception. We had been asked by the City to either hold the line in costs or to reduce as much as feasible. We ended up freezing a couple of positions. Costs for our ILS maintenance, hardware, and content enhancement continued to climb, even though we pleaded poverty to SD. In 2008-09 that we started investigating open source software.

Our intention in writing this blog is to document our project, from the decision to go with Koha and every step along the way to our goal of "going live"...and perhaps beyond.

There will be at least two contributors to this blog, Jackie Faust-Moreno, Library Services Manager, and Cathi Wiggins, Information Systems Specialist. There maybe additional bloggers as we go along. Each blogger will give their name at the end of the blog so you know their perspective. Enjoy the story of our journey...

Jackie and Cathi