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April 13th, 2009LISWireColumbus, OH--April 13, 2009-- LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries, announced today that American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) has selected a Koha ZOOM hosted system for their next integrated library system.
American University of Afghanistan (AUAF)--http://www.auaf.edu.af/index.php-- is the only non-profit private institution bringing western-style higher education to Afghanistan. The AUAF Library is supported by USAID, philanthropic donations, and student tuition.
AUAF's Koha installation will be hosted off site at one of LibLime's secure data centers. AUAF has also contracted with LibLime for data migration, support and training services.
The AUAF Library was running Koha 2.2 when current Librarian Mike Hanson arrived in January.
"I knew I didn’t have the knowledge to upgrade our version of Koha, even with the help of our highly capable IT staff. It didn’t take long to identify LibLime as the premier Koha experts in the world; and thanks to a supportive and understanding administration, we were able to hire the best," explains Mike.
Mike paints a vivid picture of the incredibly arduous circumstances in which the AUAF Library was created and currently functions: "Building a university from absolutely nothing except, literally, a collection of bombed out buildings, is not easy, as you can imagine."
Despite the hardships, things at the library are pretty normal and the library is the most popular gathering place on campus. "I thoroughly enjoy being surrounded by these happy, boisterous, apparently carefree young people who are, probably without exaggeration, the future leaders of this struggling country," Mike adds.
About American University of Afghanistan
The idea to establish the American University of Afghanistan emerged in 2002, based on the success of other American universities around the world. In just four years, the American University of Afghanistan progressed from idea to reality, with the first classes starting in 2006. Today, the University is Afghanistan’s only not-for-profit, non-political, non-sectarian, non-governmental, private and independent, internationally-supported university.
About Koha ZOOM
Koha ZOOM is the next-generation release of the award-winning Koha open-source integrated library system. Notably, it includes a powerful search engine based on Zebra, a high-performance indexing and retrieval engine. Koha ZOOM's search engine can read structured records in practically any input format (i.e.., email, XML, MARC) and allows access to them through exact boolean search expressions and relevance-ranked free-text queries. It supports large databases (more than ten gigabytes of data, tens of millions of records) as well as incremental, safe database updates on live systems.
To try out Koha ZOOM for yourself, visit LibLime's demos:
About LibLime
LibLime is the global leader in open-source solutions for libraries, with a mission to make open source accessible to libraries. Rather than sell software licenses for static, hard-to-customize software products, LibLime educates libraries about the benefits of open source, enabling them to make choices about how best to provide their communities and staff with better technology services. LibLime then facilitates implementation of open source in libraries by providing outstanding development, customization, support and training solutions--solutions tailored to each library's needs. For more information, see http://liblime.com.
Use of open source not only lowers the per-library cost of running software, it also empowers libraries with a higher level of control over customization and the overall direction of software development.
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