Depending on your programming abilities, I think you're better off
writing your own. You're a small library so you can ignore the hard
problems. A prototype is just a day or two away if you leverage a modern
framework (RoR, Sinatra, Django, Pylons) and cloud hosting (Heroku,
Google App Engine).

I would stay away from OCLC PICA. We have had bad experiences with VDX.
It's used for WorldCat Navigator and it's been a huge headache. My
biggest complaint is that the UX leaves much to be desired and I'm
equally afraid of what's hidden in the internals.

Voyager seems much too enterprisey for such a small venture. Worse, the
product is nearing its end of life and never caught up with modern web
technologies. So, you'd be stuck in 1999 and much poorer. They also have
a very closed community, where customers only seem to communicate behind
closed doors (e.g. Ex Libris sponsored wikis, etc).

2c

Brice Stacey


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
...
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2010 6:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] simple,flexible ILS for a small library.

Hello,

Some folks in the VuFind library suggested I ask here.  We are starting
a
small library and thinking of using VuFind as our online catalog.  As
for
the ILS we would like something small and simple (evergreen and others
seem
massive for the small amount of functionality we need), and especially
something which is flexible enough to allow us to base our library on
book
sharing rather than an institutionally owned collection.


book sharing will probably happen through creative use of inter-library
loan
functionality, and so an ILS that has a solid and flexible ILL is
necessary.

We will probably have less than 1,000 books (perhaps a couple thousand
if
things really take off) and less than 100 borrowers.  Probably about as
many
book sharers (ie, partner libraries) as borrowers.

Does anyone have experience with the ILS which already have drivers for
VuFind?  I think the list is:

* SirsiDynix Horizon
* Sirsi Unicorn
* Voyager:
* VTLS Virtua
* Innovative:
* DAIA / OCLC PICA:
* NewGenLib:

If you can, please comment on the suitability of these ILS for our
system
(low complexity and flexible ILL system).

I have considered just writing some administrative scripts in python.
It
would be a good project and not ridiculously difficult.  I would much
rather
write the whole thing from scratch than try to write a VuFind driver for
an
ILS not yet supported.

Thanks for reading,
Elliot