Liblime
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| LibLime | |
 |
|
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 |
| Headquarters | Athens, Ohio, USA |
| Key people | Joshua Ferraro, President, Technology and Founder Ryan Corrado Higgins, President, Products and Founder Tina Burger, VP Marketing and Founder Chris Cormack, VP, Research and Development |
| Industry | Computer software |
| Products | Koha ZOOM Koha Classic Evergreen ILS OpenNCIP |
| Website | http://liblime.com |
LibLime (a division of MetaVore, Inc.) is a company dedicated to providing open-source software solutions to libraries and is the largest distributor of the Koha Integrated Library System. LibLime was founded in 2005 and has its corporate headquarters in Athens, Ohio. [1]
The company is best known for its enterprise-class integrated library systems: Koha Classic and Koha ZOOM, though they recently began supporting the Evergreen ILS as well. LibLime provides a wide range of services on these products including hosting, installation, migration assistance, staff training, development, customization and consulting services.
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[edit] History
LibLime's capstone product, Koha, was the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS) and was originally developed by one of LibLime's partners, Katipo Communications, Ltd. The application was designed for the Horrowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand in response to their need for a reliable, fast and affordable solution to the exclusively proprietary ILS software available at that time. Horowhenua went live with Koha in January of 2000.
In late 2001, the Nelsonville Public Library System in Nelsonville Ohio, began examining alternatives to their legacy ILS. Joshua Ferraro, now LibLime's President, Technology, was the Systems Administrator at Nelsonville and spearheaded the project of migrating the library to Koha. Nelsonville sponsored MARC support and went live with Koha in 2003.
LibLime was established in early 2005 to facilitate the promotion and support of open source software in the library market. All four founders comprise the shareholders and the board of directors of LibLime's parent corporation, MetaVore Inc. (LibLime is a tradename owned by MetaVore Inc.). MetaVore Inc., an Ohio corporation, was founded in January of 2005. Since that time, Ferraro, along with the rest of the growing LibLime development team have contributed much to the open-source library community.
In 2005, Ferraro was selected as the official Koha Project Release Manager, and his first move was to propose and implement integration of a textual database engine (Zebra) to facilitate a more robust and scalable architecture and support for more complex search and retrieval operations. With Zebra integrated, Koha provides an enterprise-class ILS suitable for the largest libraries in the world, supporting tens of millions of records without performance degradation.
In 2006, LibLime acquired the assets of Skemotah, Solutions, a US-based Koha support company.
In March of 2007, LibLime acquired the Koha division of partner Katipo Communications, Ltd. Assets involved in the acquisition included existing support contracts with libraries that contracted with Kapito, copyrights and trademarks related to Koha, and the koha.org domain.[2]
[edit] Programs and Projects
[edit] Koha Open Source Integrated Library System
Koha is a full-featured open-source Integrated Library System (ILS) licensed under the GNU General Public License.
LibLime's primary contribution to the project has been overseeing (and implementing) the integration of Koha and Zebra. Zebra is a high-performance textual database that is now used for searching and record retrieval. This integration allowed LibLime to build a powerful search engine with some of the most advanced searching capabilities as well as one of the most scalable architectures available in library management systems today. [3]
The first library to go live with the Koha ZOOM product was the Nelsonville Public Library. Their online public access catalog (OPAC) is available at the following URL: http://search.athenscounty.lib.oh.us. The system features search behavior and interface that mimics successful commercial search services. It also includes comprehensive advanced search options: full support for boolean and hierarchically-nested queries; searching by language, year and library-defined types; sub-type limits based on audience, content, and format which utilize coded values in the MARC record. Also available are re-sort and Amazon-style 'refine by' options. Additionally, users can sort their results by popularity, author, title, date published; narrow search results by branch, subject, or series title; and even limit to currently available items. [4]
Other major contributions of LibLime include:
- extensive documentation for the project on both kohadocs.org and the project wiki: wiki.koha.org
- the integration code for the Koha - Zebra integration
- the Koha ZOOM search engine and search API
- Koha's Amazon.com module
- Koha's original Z39.50 Server
- wrote/maintain most of the MARC21 Authorities support in Koha
- implemented proper handling of MARC8 encoded data
[edit] Evergreen Open Source Integrated Library System
Evergreen is an integrated library system originally developed by the Georgia PINES consortium for use as their automation system. It was designed from scratch for large-scale deployment in very large public library and state-wide consortium environments with tens of millions of records and hundreds of libraries.
LibLime has been involved in the project since late 2005 and was retained by Georgia PINES to develop SIP2 support, improvements to the underlying PostgreSQL database, as well as perform quality assurance and load testing. [5] [6] [7] [8]
[edit] OpenNCIP
OpenNCIP is a project initiative by LibLime to foster creation of an open source implementation of the ANSI/NISO Z39.83-2002 NCIP Standard for Circulation Interchange Protocol. Active development began in August 2005. The project also supports the SIP2 protocol. Notably, OpenNCIP is currently in use in the 252 library Georgia PINES Consortium and is the primary SIP2 component in both Koha and Evergreen ILS.
[edit] Koha with Class
Building on the success of a pilot program at Texas Woman's University in 2006, LibLime's Koha with Class [1] initiative provides library school classrooms with hosted installations of Koha, free of charge.[9] [10] The project has a very active following with dozens of college and universities participating[11]
[edit] Business model
LibLime operates on an open source business model based on open code, community development, professional quality-assurance services, and subscription-based customer support.
Developers take the open source Koha and adapt and improve it to fit certain needs. The code they write is open, so more programmers can make further adaptations and improvements. When a problem is found, an entire community of users can come together to find a solution. The whole development process is said by some to work at a faster pace and at a lower cost than that of a proprietary model where the code is not visible to users.
The software LibLime creates using this model are widely available at no cost, which leads to the misconception that the company "sells free software."
LibLime sells subscriptions to the support, training, and integration services that help customers in using the open source software.
[edit] References
- ^ liblime.com - Corporate Facts. Retrieved on December 8, 2006.
- ^ LibLime to Acquire Katipo Communications' Koha Division. Retrieved on March 13, 2007.
- ^ Koha Earns its Stripes. Retrieved on December 8, 2006.
- ^ Koha ZOOM goes Live and it Rocks. Retrieved on December 8, 2006.
- ^ Georgia Library PINES Awards Contract to LibLime. Retrieved on December 8, 2006.
- ^ OPAC3, Authority Control, Prototype Statistical Reporting. Retrieved on December 8, 2006.
- ^ American Library Association Annual Conference. Retrieved on December 8, 2006.
- ^ LibLime Powers Koha and now Evergreen. Retrieved on March 8, 2007.
- ^ LibLime Launches Koha with Class. Retrieved on March 8, 2007.
- ^ Future Librarians Learn using Koha. Retrieved on March 8, 2007.
- ^ Koha with Class library management system classes participating. Retrieved on March 8, 2007.
