The First Week

Well, now it's Friday. We have been on Koha since Monday morning. The consensus is that our migration has gone very well. Our patrons seem to be taking the change in stride. Most of their issues have been not being able to login because of a password/PIN issue (PINs that start with a zero didn't migrate over correctly.) Once we reset their PIN they have found their way around the site with very little staff intervention. Several patrons have commented that they like the new format and features.

Staff are feeling their way along, many are wishing they'd spent more time "playing" with it when they had the chance, but have adapted quickly and their comfort zone expands daily.

We have found that there are 3 levels of issues - Discovery, Nuisance, and Problems.

1. Discovery issues are nothing more than the staff finding their rhythm and when there is more than one way to do something deciding which way is most natural for each person.
2. Nuisance issues are things like the "0" as the preceding digit in a password and the trailing "$" in an item barcode which didn't migrate to Koha in an orderly fashion. Both of which we've learned what we need to do to resolve the issue on a one-by-one basis. This too is becoming a familiar routine.
3. The Problem issues are those things we will rely upon ByWater Solutions to fix or educate us on, and there aren't many of those. But we've even found ways to cope with most of them in the short term. There are other problem issues that we created for ourselves. Staff error at work! These had to do with the marc imports and not setting the instructions for the loads correctly. For a while the catalogers thought they were losing their minds. Bibs and items were disappearing right and left! They would catalog material and the next day the titles were gone. We could appreciate their concern. We believe this is all under control now.*

The bottom line is there are few complaints and that makes any change easier to adjust to.

We thank ByWater Solutions for their excellent job and for the pleasantly surprising level of support we have received so far. And I want to thank Cathi Wiggins, our Information Systems Specialist for all the long hours she has given and her commitment to the Arcadia Public Library.

*(Most of this message was composed by Cathi in an email. She came up with the three levels of problems.)

Jackie