King’s Fund goes live with the Koha open source library management system supported by PTFS Europe

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By PTFS-Europe

25th January 2010 | Press Release

The library at The King’s Fund has gone live with the Koha open source library management system, replacing its existing Unicorn system. PTFS Europe carried out the initial implementation and is providing ongoing support. The system is hosted at the PTFS Europe data centre in Maidenhead.
Koha Library Management System
A major development in the library automation market over recent years has been the growth of open source software. In fact, the fastest growing sector in the library management system marketplace is open source software, of which Koha is one of the pre-eminent solutions.
With Koha, library staff access to the system is completely web-based; acquisitions, circulation, cataloguing, serials and reports can all be done through a web browser.  As well as a sophisticated search engine the OPAC offers a range of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 facilities such as tagging, commenting and public and private lists.   Koha can integrate with the ArchivalWare digital archiving solution as well as other federated search and link resolution services.  The King’s Fund library catalogue can be seen at http://kingsfund.koha-ptfs.eu
A key part of the migration was the ability of the team at PTFS Europe who extracted the data from Unicorn and then converted and loaded it into Koha. In addition, by working with PTFS, the King’s Fund get the best of both worlds – the freedom and functionality offered by open source software together with the benefits of getting high quality support from an organisation with an excellent reputation for delivering customer service.
Ray Phillips, Head of Information Services Development at The King’s Fund, said, “We are excited by our move to Koha: we believe it will enable us to respond flexibly and quickly to our users’ changing needs. Koha integrates well with The King’s Fund’s website and so will place the information and library service at the heart of communications with our audiences. Its attractive features and empowering functionality will allow us to successfully compete for attention in an information-saturated world. “
Jonathan Field, Technical Director of PTFS Europe commented:   “We are delighted to be working with The King’s Fund on this project and would like to welcome the staff there to our growing community of users. Koha not only gives The King’s Fund an excellent feature set but also gives them an open platform on which to develop and integrate their important collections and services
About The King’s Fund
The King’s Fund is a charity that seeks to understand how the health system in England can be improved. Using that insight, we help to shape policy, transform services and bring about behaviour change. Our work includes research, analysis, leadership development and service improvement. We also offer a wide range of resources to help everyone working in health to share knowledge, learning and ideas.

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