I am looking for any UK schools that are using open source software to manage their library.
Can you please let me know, as I am trying to convince our librarian to switch over and they would like to discuss this with another school librarian first.
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Is the question really about open source? Are you suggesting to the librarian they should change software (and that doing so would save the school money)? Have you identified options for them to look at e.g Koha, OpenBiblio which just happen to be open source?
I’ve read good reviews of http://vufind.org/ – If memory serves they have a demo screen that may help skeptics become converts. Good luck
Thanks for the replies. I was aware of the packages that are out there. What I can’t find is a school that is using them.
We use Opensource software extensively in our school. But, I can understand why our librarian wants to talk to another school to see how they are managing with using the software.
PS
Joined the Koha mailing list and was pointed to this site for seraching for what I needed 🙂
http://www.librarytechnology.org/libwebcats/?SID=20110508965515136
Well our librarian managed to contact another UK school that is using Koha.
After a very postive exchange via email our librarian is now asking when we will be switching to Koha.
Did anything every happen about setting up a directory of users and/or software so that this site could aid in helping people find real world examples of open source software being used in UK schools?
Hopefully the above example highlights how much this could help.
Schoolforge UK was maintaining a page with school-bsaed case studies, not sure whether that is still being added to. Might be interesting to do something the other way around e.g. have a directory of products by function and under the product entry have testimonials from schools using that product.
E.g.
Software by category-Library Systems-Koha-School Testimonials-"Houghton Kepier says this is just great!"
I would also like to see region included so that people could look for schools close to them using the software. But, most importantly as part of the testimonial, would be to have a link to a person that can be contacted.
It can make such a difference to talk to another school about how a particular piece of software has been implemented. Our librarian did not believe me when I told her that free open source software can actually be better than proprietary software. It is not as if our school has not used open source software before either! After one email from another school using Koha, our librarian is now looking forward to using open source software.
I have not been very active on this site or OpenSourceSchools recently so I am using my recent experience of implementing Koha to try and catch up with what is happening.