Hi, Karen.

You and I have chatted off list as well, but I also wanted to remind
everyone that eIFL-FOSS is about to start our first pilot programs for
open source ILS migrations. This will include training for systems
librarians from the pilot countries, and the pilot libraries will also
be generating huge amounts of documentation about their installation
and migration processes. For Karen in Kosovo, or anyone else who has
ties to libraries in the developing world, I can't urge you strongly
enough to try to participate in a larger programme trying to tackle
these issues. It is not a replacement for the broader open source
community (and indeed, as Josh mentions, the Koha list is a fantastic
resource), but it will supplement that support with training,
networking, and partnership opportunities that might not otherwise be
available.

Also, both of our Koha and Evergreen trainers for our upcoming
workshops are active in code4lib. I love you people!

Cheers,
Bess

Elizabeth (Bess) Sadler
Advisory Board Member, eIFL-FOSS
http://www.eifl.net/cps/sections/services/eifl-foss

On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 5:01 PM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I would love to recommend Koha, and I will definitely include Koha
> in my
> talk about current ILS's. However, 1) I do not know how much technical
> expertise they have and 2) I do not know how much technical
> expertise it
> takes to install Koha. I actually tried installing it from the
> instructions
> on the Koha site and failed, so I *do* know they need more Unix
> chops than
> I've got. Not sayin' much.
>
> I suspect that no matter what system they use, they will at least
> initially
> need quite a bit of hand-holding. That's a bit hard to do
> considering both
> the geographical and language barriers. But I  hope to come back
> with more
> of an idea of what they can do. I fear that I may not be leaving
> them with
> any solutions, just more complex questions.