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  • LISWire: Green Mountain College’s Griswold Library Goes Live on Koha with ByWater Solutions

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    October 21st, 2011LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    10/20/2011
    CONTACT:
    Nathan Curulla
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    sales@bywatersolutions.com

    Green Mountain College's Griswold Library Goes Live on Koha with ByWater Solutions

    ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that the Green Mountain College's Griswold Library, of Poultney, VT. is now live on their installation of the Koha integrated library system.

    The Library's Koha installation went live in late August, and ByWater Solutions will be
    providing ongoing support and hosting services for them.

    The Griswold Library houses a collection of over 118,000 books, videos, and electronic resources, along with over 30 databases and 30,000 print and electronic journals

    Cail Clark, Cataloging Library Specialist at the Griswold Library, commented on their decision to switch to Koha with ByWater:

    " We felt, as many libraries do, that we were paying too much and getting too little from our former ILS vendor. That being said, changing something as fundamental to all facets of library operation as one’s ILS is a monumental task, requiring extensive forethought, a realistic plan for execution of each step, and excellent communication in all stages of the process. In addition, it requires savvy data manipulation and a deep knowledge of ILS vendors and systems, what is possible, and how it can be manifested."

    She continues; "At Green Mountain College, our experience migrating to Koha supported by ByWater Solutions has been truly great. What we did not have in-house, technically speaking, ByWater provided. What we lacked in knowledge of how to make our processes and OPAC navigation smoother, ByWater supplied in the form of broad knowledge of both our old ILS and Koha; what could be done, and how. Open communication and super fast responses have made our migration and all the little proprietary adjustments we’ve needed as painless as possible."

    Cail goes on to say; " Koha has improved our public presence through its highly customizable OPAC, as well as the functionality and process flow of nearly every staff member’s work. Best of all, it’s ours, and we can easily modify it to suit our specific needs and those of our academic patrons. The ability to collaborate and influence the direction and developments within an open source platform gives us a level of control and personalized investment we never had with our old ILS, and it’s very exciting! Many thanks to ByWater for their exceptional support – before, during and after our migration to an exceptional product."

    The Griswold Library's customized online catalog can be viewed at: http://catalog.greenmtn.edu/

    About Green Mountain College:
    Green Mountain College was founded in 1834 by the Troy Conference of the United Methodist Church. Throughout its history, strong teacher-student relationships have been the hallmark of a GMC education, a tradition that continues today.

    At the heart of the College’s environmental mission is the 37-credit Environmental Liberal Arts General Education Program, which all GMC students complete. ELA combines the skills and content of a strong liberal arts course of study with a focus on the environment.

    Experiential learning is also central to a GMC education: Students are encouraged to gain hands-on experience through internships, service-learning opportunities and study abroad programs. Interdisciplinary block courses allow students to spend an entire semester working with professors from multiple disciplines on a single area of focus, often through field research, overnight outings, discussions with experts and a culminating project. Adventure programming and the Farm and Food Project provide additional hands-on learning opportunities. For more information, please visit: http://greenmtn.edu/

    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, top ranked 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

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