Rutgers Law Library Goes Open Source: the Switch to Koha

Speaker(s):

Caroline Young, John Joergensen, Joy Nelson

This session will describe Rutgers Law Library's experience with converting its ILS from Millennium to Koha, an open source ILS. Koha is generally considered to be the first open source library automation system, originated in 1999. Koha is designed to work with a minimum of hardware resources. It runs on the Linux operating system in conjunction with the Apache Web server, uses the MySQL open source database management system, and is written in Perl.
Rutgers Law School is the second law school in the United States to make the switch to Koha. In describing the process of changing to an open source ILS, Rutgers Law Library speakers will review the reasons that it was the right choice for them. They will give a nuts and bolts description of the entire process including researching the available vendors and products and cost analysis. Discussion will include a breakdown of the implementation process, data extraction, mapping the data and making design decisions about the user interface and functionality. Attendees will be given the tools to evaluate whether Koha makes sense for their organization. Rutgers worked with ByWater Solutions to make the implementation and transition smoother. A speaker from ByWater Solutions will also be available.