The Arcadia Public Library is celebrating the grand opening of the new and first open source Library Catalog in Southern California called Arcadia Searchlight.
Here are some of the new features:
Simple, clear searching.
Library can add new features
Suggestions for Library purchases available right from the catalog.
Expanded searches possible, with simple and clear instructions
Book reviews available
You can add items to a personal, private list
You can place your own comments or reviews for items in the catalog
You can add tags (personally meaningful terms) to items
You can set up an RSS feed to be notified about item arrivals connected to your personal interests or by your favorite authors
You can place all of your holds at one time
Receive notices by e-mail, and set times to receive them
The Arcadia Public Library has had three different integrated library systems (ILS) over the past twenty years. The last migration was in 2002. Through a grant from the California State Library, the Arcadia Public Library is able to cover some of the initial costs to change over to this new system. The Arcadia Public Library has contracted with ByWater Solutions for the migration, hosting and support of the Koha integrated library system.
What is Koha? Koha is the first open-source integrated library system. Koha was originally developed in New Zealand by Katipo Communications Ltd. for Horowhenua Library Trust. It first went live in January, 2000. Koha is currently maintained by a team of software providers and library technology staff from around the world. There are over 1000 libraries running on Koha internationally.
Why Koha and why now? The past two years have been financially tough for public libraries and Arcadia Public Library has been no exception. The Library was asked to hold the line on costs and/or reduce costs as much as feasible. Costs for the current ILS system continued to climb these past two years and we were unsuccessful in getting the current vendor to keep costs the same and/or to reduce them. The Library has been interested in an open source integrated library system for a couple of years and when staff compared costs of the current ILS to an open source library system, Arcadia Public Library was very impressed with what was “free” with an open source package. This included the initial purchase, additional modules that were unattainable due to high costs before, upgrades, test environment license and more. It’s not completely free but it is a big savings from what is currently being paid out now.