Koha Library Open Source System

There are various open source system available in the market. The open source systems are Koha, Lucidea, Mandarin, OPALS, OpenBiblio, NewGenLib, Evergreen, ABCD, MarcoPolo and PhpMylibrary (Chawner, 2004; Jaffe & Careaga, 2007). The Koha is known as an integrated library management system. It was developed by Katipo Communications Limited of Wellington, New Zealand for the usage of Horowhenua Library Trust (HLT). The regional library is located in Levin and about 100 kilometers from north of Wellington. The initiative of Koha initially was to replace the DOS-based system that increased in cost over the years. Open source tools such as Perl, MySQL and Apache were introduced by Katipo for developing a new system. These tools runs under the Linux platform and uses a Telnet function to communicate with branches library. On 3rd _{of January, 2000 a new software was released. This software is known as Koha.}

Koha was released to worldwide users using the General Public License (GPL) license in July 2000. Since then, internationally there has been a high demands for the Koha system. The early adopters of Koha system are from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, United State of America, India, Thailand, United Kingdom and France. The Koha adopters were from small and medium libraries such as school and special libraries. Various versions of Koha were released to the Koha community for adoption and implementation. The Koha system supported the MARC21 format since August 2002. The community either undertake the development by themselves or contribute to existing Koha projects.

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The first open source information system for the library is the Koha (ALA- TechSource, 2014). Open source is a wakeup call for librarians and potential solution for practical advantages including a solution for issues which has been frustrating the librarians over the years (Jaffe & Careaga, 2007; Morgan, 2002) . The open source adoption rate by the library is far below the other sectors and have yet to commit for open source solution and development (Jaffe & Careaga, 2007). The open source solution will create and establish the relationship between open source and libraries (Chawner, 2004). The key point is that the librarians and the organization hesitate to adopt and implement the open source information system due to varies of perception between developers and users (Jaeger & Metzger, 2002; Jaffe & Careaga, 2007). The developers are focusing on software strength and users are concerned with job performance, satisfaction, system and information quality and organization objective. This indicates that the library will continue with proprietary and expensive system. The reasons are lack of understanding, social influence, attitude towards using technology, understanding and influence of open source is only for small organization with least book collections, self-efficacy, open source system is for small libraries and less appreciation on the potential solution for libraries and evidence of failure open source projects has created the doubt on the open source technology application (ALA-TechSource, 2014; American-Libraries, 2014; Chawner, 2004; Jaeger & Metzger, 2002; Jaffe & Careaga, 2007). In Turkey public libraries 1,118 Koha projects were implemented by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (American-Libraries, 2014). The Nelsonville Public Library in the United States is the first public library to implement Koha on 26 August , 2002 (ALA-TechSource, 2014). In the United State and Canada the Koha, Open Source Automated Library System (OPALS) and Evergreen open source dominate the library market (Breeding, 2009). The Evergreen and OPALS have not found any adoption outside the United State and Canada whereas the Koha finds the use in libraries worldwide (Breeding, 2009). This clearly highlights

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the demands for open source and specifically Koha open source library information system. The majority users of information system in the world and specifically United State of America leading with Koha open source system. The Koha has 126 users from public sector in the Unites State of America. A total of 208 libraries in the United State of America has adopted and used the Koha open source system. Table 2.1 reflects the library open source information system in the United State as the Figures taken on September, 2008 (Breeding, 2009). This shows that the open source system is well accepted in the United State of America. The market for open source system is wide and there is demand for open source technology.

Table 2.1: Libraries Open Source System Usage in the United State of America

Libraries Koha Evergreen OPALS

Public 126 58 - Academic 23 - 3 School 32 - 51 Museum 12 - - Medical 3 - - Church 2 - 2 Other special 10 - 3 Total 208 58 59

There are 8 groups of the Koha worldwide users are categorized from the North America (70 users ), Central America (1 user ), South America (11 users), Oceania (28 users), Asia (49 users), Europe (55 users), Africa (18 users) and Middle East (1 user) (Worldwide-KOHA-Users, 2015).

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The open source is a shape shifter for raising awareness among librarians and setting up strategies for libraries and finding a new path for library solution and to ensure the libraries future is not a repetition of the past (Chawner, 2004; Chudnov, 1999; Jaeger & Metzger, 2002; Jaffe & Careaga, 2007). The adoption trends of Koha open source system is merely for small to mid-sized of public and academic libraries and gradually is penetrating to huge collections and complex libraries (ALA-TechSource, 2014). Figure 2.2 shows the world wide users’ of Koha from public, academic and other libraries with an estimation of 16,000 users’ (KOHA-WordPress, 2015). The trend shows that higher adoption of open source in the United State of America and the least adoption is at the Middle East. The open source attracts the organization with least budget and high cost of maintenance for the proprietary system (Breeding, 2009; Zhussupova & Rahman, 2011). However there is factor which holds the open source adoption. This factor is based on the non-technical aspects of users acceptance which reflects the behavioral aspects of the open source system (Zhussupova & Rahman, 2011). In any open source system, the information technology skill is developed only with strong management support (Adnanh & Lee, 2015).

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