In early March, 2011 students at Drexel University’s iSchool, the College of Information Science and Technology, will begin utilizing LibLime Koha in their Cataloging and Classification course through LibLime's Koha with Class program.

LibLime will provide the class of approximately 25 students, with a hosted installation of Koha, free of charge. This will allow the students unlimited access and all privileges associated with the staff end of Koha as well as all OPAC functionality for the duration of the course.

“I have known about LibLime’s Koha With Class program for some time now from other colleagues at the University,” said course instructor Rebecca Kilzer, “It is so important to incorporate hands-on ILS experience in the classroom, I look forward to getting these new students excited about using the tolls they will be relying on once they join the profession,” she finished.

LibLime's Koha with Class program is designed to give library school faculty a chance to embed the use of an ILS into their coursework and curricula. Students gain practical experience with library automation software as they prepare to enter the library workforce. LibLime provides free support for these Koha with Class installations, and already there are dozens of faculty members throughout North America taking advantage of this program. LibLime is looking to expand the program overseas to support librarianship at an international level.

To learn more about the program visit - http://www.liblime.com/for-students

~Diverse Collection of STM Journals and Reference Books from IGI Global Will Be Searchable for EBSCO Discovery Service™ Users~

IPSWICH, Mass. — March 15, 2011 — IGI Global journals and reference books will be searchable via EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS), a robust and comprehensive discovery service from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO). An agreement between EBSCO and IGI Global will allow metadata for 131 journals and more than 1,500 reference books to be added to the Base Index of EDS—bringing great value to its users looking for science, technical and medical (STM) resources.

IGI Global is an international publishing company specializing in scholarly research publications and databases covering all aspects of information science technology utilization and management. The metadata from IGI Global will greatly expand the international STM resources available to EDS users worldwide.

Metadata that will be available via EDS include IGI Global’s peer reviewed journals—providing a focus on information/computer science & technology applied to business and public administration, engineering, education, medicine and healthcare and social sciences. The agreement also includes their diverse collection of reference books. The reference books will supply cutting-edge research in information science, business science, medical information science and engineering science from authors and editors from all over the world.

IGI Global joins a long list of publishers and other content partners who are taking part in EDS to bring more visibility to their content, such as: the British Library, Baker & Taylor, NewsBank, Readex, LexisNexis, Alexander Street Press, ArXiv, Oxford University Press, American Psychological Association, ABC-CLIO, ingentaconnect, Government Printing Office, JSTOR, ECONIS, Mergent and Credo Reference. For mutual customers, Web of Science and H.W. Wilson are part of a growing list of information sources available to EBSCO Discovery Service users.

EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box—searching made even more powerful because of the quality of metadata and depth and breadth of coverage.

EBSCO Discovery Service is quickly becoming the discovery selection for many libraries (www.ebscohost.com/discovery/eds-news), and an obvious partner for content providers. Because the service builds on the foundation provided by the EBSCOhost platform, libraries gain a full user experience for discovering their collections/OPAC—which is not typical in the discovery space. Further still, in the many universities and other libraries where EBSCOhost is the most-used platform for premium research, users are not asked to change their pathways or habits for searching. There’s simply more to discover on the familiar EBSCOhost platform, and the same can be said for library administrators who can leverage their previous work with EBSCOadmin.

About EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing is the world’s premier database aggregator, offering a suite of nearly 300 full-text and secondary research databases. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals, magazines, books, monographs, reports and various other publication types from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). The company’s product lines include proprietary databases such as Academic Search™, Business Source®, CINAHL®, DynaMed™, Literary Reference Center™, MasterFILE™, NoveList®, SocINDEX™ and SPORTDiscus™ as well as dozens of leading licensed databases such as ATLA Religion Database™, EconLit, INSPEC®, MEDLINE®, MLA International Bibliography, The Philosopher’s Index™, PsycARTICLES®, PsycINFO® and RILM™. Databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the most-used for-fee electronic resource in libraries around the world.

EBSCO is the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ a core collection of locally-indexed metadata creating a unified index of an institution’s resources within a single, customizable search point providing everything the researcher needs in one place—fast, simple access to the library’s full text content, deeper indexing and more full-text searching of more journals and magazines than any other discovery service (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com. EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Manager
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

Bethesda, MD – March 15, 2011 – The College of Biblical Studies (CBS) in Houston, TX, has selected LibLime as their vendor of choice to implement and support Koha, as their next generation, open source, Integrated Library System (ILS).

Migrating from their legacy Winnebago Spectrum system, CBS has selected LibLime to perform all of the implementation services including professional project management, system configuration, data migration, and staff training. LibLime will also provide annual support and hosting in our distributed computing cloud platform.

About The College of Biblical Studies
The College of Biblical Studies, formerly the Houston Bible Institute, was founded in 1979. It is the largest nationally accredited, multi-ethnic Bible College in North America. The College provides biblically based education for the Body of Christ, with primary focus on African American and other minority groups, and equips its students with a biblical worldview for Christian service to the church and the world.

About LibLime - PTFS
LibLime – PTFS is the global leader in providing support for the Koha open source ILS. Rather than sell software licenses for static, hard-to-customize software products, the PTFS LibLime Division 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. The PTFS LibLime Division then facilitates deployment of Koha in libraries by providing outstanding consulting, development, implementation, and support/hosting for libraries of all types and sizes. PTFS is also the developer of the world’s leading content management software, ArchivalWare, and specializes in meeting library personnel staffing requirements, digitization, and metadata keying services. For more information, see http://liblime.com or http://ptfs.com or http://archivalware.net.

March 15th 2011
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

The Northeast Kansas Library System Chooses ByWater Solutions For Koha Support and Implementation

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that the Northeast Kansas Library System, of Lawrence, KS. has partnered with them for Koha support and hosting services.

ByWater Solutions and Catalyst IT of Wellington NZ partnered to bring the NEKLS NExpress database onto the ByWater Solutions servers early this month with very positive results. ByWater and Catalyst will also be partnering together for the ongoing development needs of NEKLS.

Jim Minges, Executive Director of NEKLS, commented on their decision to switch to ByWater Solutions for their ongoing hosting and support: "The experience of the Northeast Kansas Library System with ByWater Solutions has been entirely positive. They have developed a very creative solution to our Koha hosting and support needs in partnership with Catalyst IT. Ruth Bavoussett, our ByWater migration manager, has done a splendid job in managing a complex migration of our Koha system. When serious glitches occurred in the data transfer, Ruth worked through the night to make our migration happen on schedule. We appreciate ByWater Solution’s total commitment to Koha open source principles, and look forward to partnering on developing new Koha features and adding additional libraries to our Koha consortium."

Brendan Gallagher, CEO of ByWater stated: "We look forward to a long and very productive relationship with Jim and the staff of NEKLS. NEKLS is another excellent illustration of the flexibility and scalability of both Koha and the companies who support it. We have enjoyed working with both NEKLS and Catalyst in the implementation of the NExpress catalog and look forward to more collaboration in the future."

The Northeast Kansas Library System's NExpress Catalog is made up of roughly 35 member libraries and houses over 850,000 records. For more information and to search their online catalog, please visit: http://catalog.nexpresslibrary.org/

About the Northeast Kansas Library System:
The Northeast Kansas Library System is a cooperative multi-type regional library system created by Kansas statutes. NEKLS has approximately 120 member libraries, including 48 public libraries, 22 academic and special libraries, and 50 school districts and private schools. NEKLS provides a variety of consulting and training, financial assistance, technology support and resource sharing services, including the NExpress regional library catalog. NEKLS and its member libraries are leaders and innovators in providing exemplary library services. For more information please visit: http://www.nekls.org/

About Koha:
Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha's impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies--XHTML, CSS and Javascript--making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit: http://www.koha-community.org

About ByWater Solutions:
With over 10 years of experience, ByWater Solutions offers customized hosting, data migration, configuration, installation, training, support options and development of enterprise class open-source library systems. Offering a 24/7 technical helpline, ByWater Solutions’ clients have the support system they need to make their software work for them. ByWater Solutions pledges to share 100% of all developed code to the Koha community for the strengthening and advancement of the Koha ILS. For more information about ByWater Solutions, please visit: http://www.bywatersolutions.com