Check out this communication between a Koha end user and Ian Walls, one of the Koha developers and a ByWater Solutions employee. This exchange occurred via ByWater's support ticketing system. I think it shows what is so incredible about working in an open source environment. I can't imagine this exchange happening with a proprietary system!

Marshall Breeding announced the results of his 2010 ILS Survey and two of the big winners in this year's report are Koha and Evergreen.  And, interestingly, the big loser was none other than SirsiDynix.  

According the Breeding's data, 150 libraries migrated to Evergreen (I say migrated but his stats often reflect a "contract" not necessarily a migration) and 133 migrated to Koha.  In contrast, only 53 libraries migrated to a SirsiDynix product, 48 to Agent Verso, and 28 to Millennium.  

Of the 150 libraries migrating to Evergreen, 89 of them came from a SirsiDynix product.

To put it all in even more stark contrast, note that 50 libraries migrated to Koha with ByWater Solutions (versus the other 83 or migrated to Koha with another service provider or did it on their own).  That's almost twice as many new customers as Millennium gained in 2010 and only 2 fewer than Sirsi/Dynix.

See Breeding's data for yourself:  ILS Reverse Turnover for 2010  and ILS Turnover in 2010.

1. New Patrons are now being limited to only five items for check-out. (At first, it was unlimited charges.)
2. Patrons are now limited to only five movie DVD's. (At first it was unlimited)
3. Receipts for check-outs are now available. (For the first couple of days, we were unable to get any.) We still need to tweak them but much better.
4. We now have items/holdings attached to bibrecords for on-order material. This was a big problem for us. Now patrons/staff are able to place holds for these titles.
5. Authorities are working!! This is a big one. Cathi assured me that new authorities were being added to the catalog when we first migrated to Koha however that hasn't been the case for the past two weeks. The catalogers have been tearing our their hair in frustration and the reference staff has wondered why new books haven't come out of Technical Services. Today, we finally have resolved this problem.
6. It looks like discarding is working as it should. If we delete the last item/holding attached a bib record then it is deleted as well. We don't understand why it takes awhile for this to show up/ or out of the catalog. Does it have to do with the zebra indexing? Cathi says the records often need time to cycle through the system.

So, this week's accomplishments were an outstanding holiday present to Cathi and myself. Now we have three days off from work... no thinking about Koha!

Jackie

We have a problem with adding new bibliographic records from the Marc Import. It looks like Koha doesn't automatically attach a holding or item to the new records so our patrons (and staff) haven't been able to place holds on newly purchased material until they are cataloged. We have come up with a work around for this, at least until this issue is considered by development for an enhancement, by using MarcEdit to add the necessary 952 fields (a, b, c, y) to the Marc Import file before it is staged so that the temporary item record is created when the new bib record is imported into the catalog.

Authority records are not showing up in the catalog. Cathi has been downloading files from Technical Services but these records are showing as available authorities when the catalogers need them. We have a ticket in for this with our consultant team, ByWater Solutions.

The most troubling problem is that titles that were migrated aren't always searchable in the catalog and then in most cases reappear after the item is checked in even though it isn't actually checked out. This is puzzling to us. We know that a small percentage of our titles didn't migrate correctly from our old system, SirsiDynix Symphony, for one reason or another. For example the item barcodes that ended with a $ didn't migrate over correctly--the trailing $ was omitted. We are able to add the $ to the barcodes and this corrects the problem. This is an issue that we are fixing as the items turn up on a one-by-one basis.

I give kudos to the staff. Luckily the Christmas school vacation days are a slower time for the Library; it allows us to work out some of the kinks with the system. And while the staff continue to pass on problems/issues to Cathi and myself, they are still positive about the system.

Jackie

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