Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio – Everyone loves to smile! This new book will definitely add a smile to your face while counting and rhyming with the loving Kudzu Kidz friends. It is a fun book for all ages to enjoy. Kudzu Kidz shine as their personalities show through each page counting up to ten with rhymes that sound like a song. Share with your family and friends!

Counting and Rhyming with Friends retails at $9.99 and is available at https://www.createspace.com/4022165.

What Is Kudzu Kidz?

Kudzu Kidz are silly leafy-like friends with giving hearts. They grow fast with children and guide them to stay on the right path especially during difficult times. Tough topics are their specialty. They encourage kids to make the right choices as well as remain confident and positive no matter how messy life becomes.

About the Author

Anne Kline is an author (illustrator/writer) of a unique line of children’s books owned under her company called Kudzu Kidz, LLC.

Kudzu Kidz, LLC grew from Anne Kline’s inspiration while running trails in Atlanta, Georgia as she trained for the NYC marathon. Kudzu is a vine that grows a foot-a-day in the southeastern United States that was brought over from Japan to help with erosion. It grows rapidly over top barns, houses, telephone wires or nearly anything that crosses its path creating unusual shapes. Ms. Kline thought they looked like cartoon characters. Who knew an 8 mile run would create the birth of Kaye, Narz and Scooter? Shortly after her inspired run, she painted each character onto cheap canvas with acrylics.

Sixteen years later, having experienced life by having two beautiful daughters, losing four precious babies to miscarriages and struggling through a heart wrenching divorce has taught her that no matter how messy life becomes, there is always something or someone to be thankful for in her life. This lesson has formed the mission statement of her Kudzu Kidz, LLC and she plans to share this message with young children everywhere. Stay positive and believe in yourself.

About Kudzu Kidz, LLC

Kudzu Kidz, LLC target market is boys and girls at the age of 4 through 9 years old with our focus on encouraging self-esteem and building positive ways to overcome any challenge in their lives. Our main goal is teaching the powerful value of being thankful for people or things in our lives and believing in ourselves to accomplish any goals we set. We feel it is important to realize our existing blessings in life instead of complaining about what we don't have or things that go wrong. We will explain through stories including humor how negative experiences teach us how to improve ourselves. We encourage children to be thankful for failures in life, because it teaches us how to learn from our mistakes. Kudzu Kidz shows how to turn negative circumstances into something positive and be thankful for what we learned instead of dwell on our shortcomings.

www.kudzukidz.com

North Bethesda, MD, November 20, 2012- After using the new release of LibLime Koha 4.14 with Lucene Solr for a few weeks, South Central Library System (SCLS), based in Wisconsin, has strong positive feedback for LibLime regarding the latest iteration of the open-source software. SCLS maintains a 42-member LibLime Koha union catalog with over 832,000 bibliographic records, more than 2.3 million item records, and three circulation transactions per second during peak production.

Vicki Teal Lovely, ILS Project Manager for SCLS, says, “Since we upgraded to LibLime Koha 4.14 using the Solr search engine, we have seen several benefits. The time that it takes to index data has reduced from 5 hours to just minutes. Solr has fixed some searching flaws that were a problem with the Zebra search engine: facets now work for all titles in the search result and diacritics and punctuation no longer cause searches to fail. We were able to make relevancy ranking adjustments that have resulted in a noticeable difference in search results. Member library staff members have commented that relevancy is definitely improved. Searches such as "1984" and "The Help" result in a list with the English language books right at the top. What you don't see is the fact that Solr is a much more robust and flexible search engine. It lays the foundation for us to make continued improvements to the searching in our public catalog. SCLS is proud to have been a co-sponsor of the development of the Solr search engine for LibLime Koha.”

The latest code version changes the indexing engine from Zebra to Solr, which provides for more precise searching. The Solr engine will bring many benefits not available in the prior Zebra engine. With Solr, indexing of imported records (single and batch) takes only minutes to complete. In the OPAC, searchers will benefit from expanded facet searching that covers the entire results set, as opposed to simply the screen being viewed. A new titles feature is automatically embedded into the OPAC and libraries can control the length of time titles remain on the list. This new addition brings back search results within 3 to 5 seconds, which is much improved over the time required to complete a search in Zebra.

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.

11/15/2012
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

Banning Library District Goes Live on Koha with ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and the U.S.’ forefront provider of Koha (www.koha-community.org) support, announced today that the Banning Library District of Banning CA. is now live on their installation of the Koha integrated library system.

ByWater Solutions completed the migration for the Library District in October and will be providing ongoing Koha support and hosting services for their over 50,000 bibliographic records and 21,000 patrons.

Robert Lippman, Director of the Banning Library District, commented on their decision to choose Koha and ByWater:

“Koha is a sophisticated library automation system, it’s customizable and flexible, and allows us to provide a better experience for our patrons – and the open source architecture means we avoid the expense of proprietary software licensing. ByWater’s management of the transition was smooth, our legacy data is intact and accessible, and most importantly, our patrons were not unduly inconvenienced.”

The Banning Library District’s customized online catalog can be viewed here: http://catalog.banning.bywatersolutions.com.

About Banning Library District:

Located just a few blocks from downtown Banning, The Banning Library District houses a collection of over 51,000 print, digital and electronic resources to its over 21,000 library patrons. The library also houses a local history and genealogy collection which is open to the public. For more information about the Banning Library District, please visit: http://www.banninglibrarydistrict.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://koha-community.org/

About ByWater Solutions:

ByWater Solutions is a full service, high quality support and implementation company dedicated to providing libraries with a lower cost, more advanced level of support for their ILS than a traditional proprietary solution can offer. ByWater Solutions has a proven track record in first rate Koha implementation and support with library systems of all sizes. Our highly ranked, comprehensive support is what sets our company apart from any other vendor in the industry. Partnering with ByWater Solutions to support Koha not only lowers the cost of implementing and maintaining an ILS, but more importantly empowers libraries by giving them the flexibility and freedom they deserve. For more information please visit: http://bywatersolutions.com/

November, 2012 — Librarians Without Borders is proud to announce Jorge Chojolán’s North American speaking tour, which includes events in Toronto, London (ON), Ottawa, Montreal, and Los Angeles . Our Guatemalan partner, Jorge, is the founder and director of the Asturias Academy, a progressive K-12 school that offers education for students from low-income and indigenous families. The speaking events will focus on education reform, leadership, indigenous issues, libraries and literacy in Guatemala and take place from Nov. 11-29, 2012. For more information on specific cities: http://tinyurl.com/968mmms.

An overextended and underfunded school system has failed to meet the educational needs of Guatemalans, especially the indigenous population, which has a 65 per cent rate of illiteracy. Jorge has spent his life committed to improving access to education for low income and indigenous families in Guatemala and has created an alternative school system designed to spur improvements in education throughout the country. The Ashoka Foundation recognized the impact of his social entrepreneurship with a prestigious fellowship.

Since 2009, Librarians Without Borders has worked with Jorge and the Asturias Academy to promote literacy and libraries in Guatemala. Through many hours of fundraising, planning and hard work, Asturias was able to open a community library to students and their families in January 2011.

Tour Dates
Toronto, ON Nov. 12 and 13 • London, ON Nov. 14 • Ottawa, ON Nov. 16 • Montreal, QC Nov.19 and 20 • Los Angeles, CA Nov. 29

About Librarians Without Borders
Librarians Without Borders (LWB) is a non-profit organization that strives to improve access to information resources regardless of language, geography, or religion, by forming partnerships with community organizations in developing regions. We believe libraries have a fundamental role as defenders of intellectual freedom and providers of equal access to information.

Access to information is vital in supporting learning and literacy, reducing poverty, empowering citizens, and building healthy, strong communities.

For More Information
Melanie Sellar and Mark Gelsomino
Co-Executive Directors,
Librarians Without Borders
exec@lwb-online.org
310-303-7303 or 613-863-5450

North Bethesda, MD, November 14, 2012 – LibLime, a division of PTFS, announces the public release of LibLime Koha 4.12.

LibLime Koha 4.12 has been in beta production release among sponsoring libraries since June 2012. After completing a rigorous beta testing phase, the application is now publically available for all as a download at http://www.liblime.com/demos as well as http://www.koha.org/liblime-koha. Release Notes are available at each site. The source code is also available for public access in the LibLime unified git repository located at https://github.com/liblime/LibLime-Koha.

The latest version of LibLime Koha continues to add deeper support for consortia and enhanced performance for larger and larger collections with increased circulation traffic. With all LibLime Koha versions since 4.8, the entire codebase continues to run in the Plack environment for increased performance. LibLime Koha 4.12 continues to provide libraries with the most advanced functionality and performance available in the open development ILS arena.

Some of the new functionality in LibLime Koha 4.12 includes many features designed by and for librarians to allow for local customizations in OPAC design and some additional SIP2 messages. New features in LibLime Koha 4.12 include:
• Provision of local customization of zebra relevancy rankings so sites can customize the types of materials displayed first in a search results set
• Option to apply limits on a basic OPAC search by adding a drop down to the OPAC masthead
• Expansion of search limits in both the OPAC and Staff search interface (advanced page) providing for local flexibility in the set up of the advanced search page
• Limitation of item holdings display to just "home" library of the searcher in the OPAC so patrons can see materials available to them at their home library quickly
• Addition of the ability to limit search results by “book” in format and “adult” in audience
• Addition of unique identifiers throughout the OPAC to allow easier jquery customization
• Expansion of holds queue report to add status information
• Enhancement of SIP2 for ITG communication to pass messages regarding 'Lost Item' status
• Enhancement of SIP2 to pass message regarding shelving location

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.