Duluth, Ga., September 10, 2019: Equinox is pleased to announce the successful migration of John Brown University Library to Koha, the first open source Integrated Library System to be used worldwide.

Their migration involved 118,761 bibliographic records and 1,855 patrons at the university. Equinox provided implementation and data services in addition to Koha support, hosting, and auxiliary services. Training for Koha was also provided as part of the migration by Equinox.

“I think of [the migration] like a DIY project,” said Jake Posey, ILL Services Librarian and Koha Migration Project Lead at John Brown University. “While we could have done the project it would have taken longer than expected, cost us more than we thought, and not been as good as we liked. Having the Equinox team with the right knowledge and right tools made the transition go smoothly with great results. If we had done it ourselves we definitely would have missed crucial data, struggled with fine tuning OPAC customization, and been stuck trying to fix some tricky technical issues. The Equinox migration team made it look easy.”

Founded in 1999, Koha is the first free and open source library automation package. Equinox's team includes long-standing Koha developers.

"The John Brown staff were a pleasure to work with but for me the best part of the migration is after it's over,” said Rogan Hamby, Data and Project Analyst at Equinox. “Hearing from the library staff about what they're now able to do with their new ILS for the students at the school - that is always the best part of a project. I love seeing the libraries excited, empowered, and having fun."

To learn more about Koha and the expert services Equinox has to offer please visit https://www.equinoxinitiative.org/.

About Equinox Open Library Initiative
Equinox Open Library Initiative Inc. is a nonprofit company engaging in literary, charitable, and educational endeavors serving cultural and knowledge institutions. As the successor to Equinox Software, Inc., the Initiative carries forward a decade of service and experience with Evergreen and other open source library software. At Equinox OLI we help you empower your library with open source technologies.

About Koha
Created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand, Koha is the first open source Integrated Library System to be used worldwide. The software is a full-featured ILS with a dual-database design (search engine and RDBMS) built to be compliant with library standards. Koha’s OPAC, staff, and self-checkout interfaces are all web applications. Distributed under the General Public License (GPL), libraries are free to use and install Koha themselves or to purchase support and development services. For more information on Koha, please visit http://koha-community.org.

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