Transcript From Proprietary to Open Source

At the North of England Institute of Mining and
Mechanical Engineers Library, Newcastle upon Tyne
Jennifer Kelly – Mining Institute Librarian (MCLIP)
Qualified librarian with strong understanding of the NEIMME collections.
No previous experience of specifying LMS or database design!
James Watson – Mining Institute Systems Administrator (v)
Technical Architect of JAMIE
Member of NEBytes (Newcastle based technology group) – close ties with
local universities
Systems Analyst specialising in systems deployments
North of England Institute of
Mining and Mechanical
Engineers
Specialist reference
library - 65,000 items
on the catalogue.
 Diverse collections:
Books, journal runs,
archives, objects,
maps and photos.
 Five libraries in one.
 12,000+ volunteer
hours/year

Previous LMS problems
Old system malfunctioned on a regular
basis
 Data was not being saved
 “Ghost records” held on client machines
 Could not see our data outside the
software
 High maintenance fee for practically
zero support

Problems
Support’s solution was to upgrade
(£15,000+).
 Or £2,500+ to come out and look at our
database and correct any errors due to
a failure of validation rules by their
software
 Support told us our problems were
caused by our configuration

Problems
Poor data – Author database, Subjects
list.
 Learning MARC
 Broadband speed
 Improving KOHA - database
performance
 Migration

Problems (images)
Passwords held in PLAIN
TEXT!
Database was held in multiple CSV files
(A BIG NO NO) – We could only open in
Excel and specialised custom written
applications (Was not fully Excel
compatible)
Database files overlapping (cause of
corruption, reason we use databases to store
data NOT flat CSV files)
Problems
As we were instructed to run as an
Administrator user on the server - we
could remotely take control of our
system by adding commands to an CSV
file or by Web Connect (huge security
risk)
Records would “disappear” or
alter themselves due to the
application closing faster than it
can save the file the user is
working on
Database corruption
Ghost records
Why Open Source?
Implement our own solution
 Less cost / More time trade-off
 Chance to look at our own problems and
fix them
 Stop these problems happening again
 Stop us being held in a contract with
practically non-existent support
 Stop us being locked in

How we did it
Started off looking at what we needed tests
 Worked closely with a local university, a
company and lots of volunteers
 Came up with an idea for minimum
maintenance server on Windows
 “Branched” off Koha and Evergreen for
Windows
 Got to work on implementation

Difficulty curve
Easy
• Koha on Windows
• Web Interface
• Scalable Design
Hard
• Evergreen modules on Windows
• Programming scripts and modules to do what we need to do
(modifications)
• Getting what we needed out of both packages
Extremely Difficult
• KOHA performance improvements
• Ensuring at least 99% of data is successfully transferred into MARC
code
How we did it
Specialised module linking Koha that
converts NON-MARC code (txt, ini,
CSV) into MARC-XML compliant code
 Any that fail are outputted separately to
a file for manual conversion
 MARC (Librarian friendly) – XML (IT
Friendly)

Logical separation of items
Frontend to website / library visitors to perform
searches
For library staff and volunteers to create, edit,
delete authorities, records and items
Manages the server and the technical aspects of
the software (updates, upgrades) with
administrative capabilities over the database
Conversion tools to convert non MARC compliant
data into converted MARC-XML complaint records
How it works
Excellent
 Supports a larger record set and less
problems
 Continually improving
 Supports importing of non-compliant
records and converts them in a 3 layer
staging pattern from older system
(KOHA normally has 2 stage)
Conversion, application and import

Costs
£900 hardware
 £150 p.a. server licensing
 £4,600 p.a. private support
 £20,000 Volunteer time


c.£6,000 p.a. per site
Performance
After performance enhancements, faster
than standard KOHA
 Includes features that are mandatory for
specialised libraries (record vs series
collection)
 Worked on from a practical standpoint
(not theoretical ideals, just practical
usage)
 CILIP UKCS v3 compliant (standards)

OPAC view
http://opac.mininginstitute.org.uk
LMS view
LMS record view
Contact us
www.mininginstitute.org.uk

Jennifer Kelly (Librarian):
[email protected]
@mininglibrarian
0191 2332459

James Watson (IT):
[email protected]
0191 2332459