Best software for academic libraries

[Satya P Shetty]

I am librarian with a 5 year old college which has jr. college, degree college, hospitality college and management college in its complex with only one library catering to all the institutes. Now we are planning to go for library automation. Following table was provided to me as comparision of library softwares. I would like to know the institutes that are similar to where I am placed what softwares they are using and whether this comparision is ok.

Sr. No	Features	Koha	Egranthalaya	SLIM	Libsys
1	Webbased	Yes	Not	Not	Yes
2	Marc 21	Yes	No	No	No
3	Modules	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
4	Opensource	Yes	No	No	No
5	Cloud based	Yes	No	No	No
6	Price	Tailormade	3-11,000/-	125,000	150.000
7	Maintenance	As per requirements	500/- per visit	15% of first year	15% of first year
8	Data Security	Yes	No	No	No
9	Revision of version	Every 6th Months	Four to Five year	Four to Five year	Four to Five year
10	Modular/Customisable	Yes	No	No	No
11	Local Support	AMC	per visit	AMC	AMC
12	Manual	Yes	No	No	No
13	Community Groups	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
14	NCP 2 for RFID	Yes	No	No	No
15	Vendor Lock	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
16	International Standards	Yes	No	No	No
17	Cost of Hardware and Software	Lowest	Highest	Highest	Highest
18	Z3950 Protocol	Yes	No	No	No
19	Unicode Support	Yes	No	No	No
20	Company Ownership Type	OpenSource	Central Government NIC	Private	Private
21	Union catalogue of Branch Libraries	Yes	No	No	No

Thank you

[Abilash Achuthan]

Demo for LibLime Academic Koha

For Academic Librarians, By Academic Librarians

No software installed on desktops, and no servers required in the libraries 

Completely Web-based and built on MySQL - all data is readily accessible to all users via a Web browser 

Hosted in LibLime's cloud computing data center and distributed via Software as a Service (SaaS) - hundreds of libraries worldwide are able to alleviate their internal IT support needs 

 http://www.liblime.com/demos

[Surajit]

 Dear Mam,

Here i found all the suggesetions are valuable and effective..I only want to add 'after sale serivice' or 'customer care service' of the product is the another vital element to choose a lib softwr..We all librarians are usualy busy with huge works and houskpg jobs..Its difficult for a librarian  to manage the software reltd problems which may occur any time.  that time. the vendor support is very essential...otherwise it creates a big problem for the librarian. in case of open source software, i think there r no vendor service available during those situation...I think, before going to purchase a lib software, you should think abt this thing also...

Suvo Bijoya to u and all lis freinds...

Surajit.

Kolkata.

[Sudhir Gandotra]

Koha is undoubtedly the best LMS available.

Now, Koha's services have been taken to new level and the Platform for Libraries has been created that provides Koha services like Implementation-Hosting, AMC and Upgrades free of cost for ever.

Yes, you can get your Koha implemented on Cloud free of cost and you do not have to pay even for Maintenance or Upgrades.

You get standard Koha features, without having to worry about the daily maintenance issues with your I.T. team and you can spend all your time to improve and enhance your library, helping students to learn better.

All this is available at www.bestbookbuddies.com and you are welcome to register your library to get started.

The answer to your first question : "How do we earn to spend these amounts ?", is : We have developed a new win-win solution and we put 2 ads on a page view to recover our expenses.

Come over to www.bestbookbuddies.com and enjoy the best of Koha fre...