Open your mind! Selecting and implementing an integrated library system: the open-source opportunity

Abstract

AIM: The Belgian Health Care Knowledge Centre (KCE – Kenniscentrum / Centre d’Expertise) is a recently established government agency that conducts studies in the field of Good Clinical Practice, Health Technology Assessment, Health Care Services Research and Equity and Patient Behaviour, and includes a small specialized library. During its first year of existence, the catalogue of the library was held in EndNote: the need for an Integrated Library System (ILS) was urgent, but no specific budget was dedicated for buying such a system. METHODS: We elaborated a wish-list and a selection procedure to guide ourselves in the following steps. We then searched for Open-source opportunities through various sources (journals, Web…). RESULTS: From the wish-list, 2 serious candidates were pre-selected: Koha and PMB. After installation tests, PMB was chosen to be the KCE ILS. PMB was installed on a production server, fully parameterized (classification, authorities, users…) and officially launched in March 2006. The users enjoy the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC), reserving and borrowing a book is easier; an alerting tool may also warn them about new books or journal issues; in a few clicks, records are exported to EndNote. The job of the librarian is simplified too: user management, downloading entries from other library catalogues through Z39.50, presenting recent acquisitions or specialized collections directly through the OPAC…becomes easier. CONCLUSION: Thanks to the efforts of the open-source community, any library can now enjoy a serious ILS at no licence cost: the saved money can hence be allocated to the extension of the collection.