Monday, September 10, 2007

Commonalities between Koha and Vubis Smart

Koha and Vubis Smart are library management systems that are fully integrated and include acquisitions, cataloguing, circulation, and serials modules. Although Koha is an open source system, both systems have many commonalities.

Both of these systems can operate on a Windows, Linux, or Unix platform and both are web based. In both Koha and Vubis Smart appearance and functionality is completely configurable and both have been designed with the end user in mind. This allows libraries to provide an intuitive and streamlined user interface.

The OPACs have the ability to integrate multi-media objects, on-line resources, and web sites. Various enhancements can be included in both, such as cover images, access to table of contents, summaries, annotations, and reviews. These enhancements are beneficial as they allow users to learn more about an item direct from the OPAC.

Both systems have an advanced search option however initially the Vubis Smart system appeared to be more sophisticated in this area, with the ability to use left and right truncation, wildcards, proximity searching, and fuzzy logic. On testing various library OPACs that use Koha, it became evident that these features can be incorporated into the advanced search, as Crawford County Library has done with fuzzy logic and proximity searching (http://catalog.ccfls.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-main.pl).

The cataloguing modules allow libraries to tailor data to their specific needs. The modules are standards based and provide the ability to import and export data.

Vubis Smart has the capacity to provide extensive facilities in managing acquisitions. This includes flexibility in ordering, funds maintenance, invoices and reporting. The serial module caters for receiving, claiming, routing and links to ejournals. Details of the acquisition, serials, and reporting features for Koha were not comprehensively listed however the documentation does state that it has the ability to manage these modules with a variety of comprehensive options.

The circulation modules of both systems are based on standards-compliant WWW technologies. Users can access and manage their own borrower accounts in both systems and both are self-service compatible. These features offer flexibility and efficiency to both users and libraries.

From the information supplied and my use of the Koha system it appears that these systems are quite compatible in their functionality even though one is open source and the other only available via a license.

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