The University Library at the Catholic Institute of Toulouse experienced an easy migration from one open source library management system to the other, reports Bamboo, a French blog specialising on document management tools. Main reason for the switch is that the university wanted easier access to Sudoc (Système Universitaire de Documentation).

Magali Hurtrel-Pizarro, the library's curator, explains that the library decided to consider only open source systems. "We have had positive experiences with this kind of software since 2005."

The new system also makes it easier to access the Origène, the meta-catalogue of the libraries of five French Catholic institutes and universities.

The Toulouse university library recently started using Koha. This is an open source library system, originally written in 1999 for the libraries in the New Zealand community of Horowhenua.

At the Catholic library, Koha replaced PMB. The latter is an alternative open source library system, formerly known as PhpMyBibly. It was originally written in 2002 for the public library of the French municipality of Agneaux.

Open standards
The migration from PMB to Koha took place in 2011 and went very well, Bamboo quotes the curator. According to Frédéric Demian, who helped the library with the migration, both open source applications handle the open library standard (Unimarc) very well.

Demian, who works for Tamil, a Paris-based library IT consultancy, adds that such applications will also have some management data for which there is no standard format. "However, because both are open source, it is easy to find this specific information and to engineer a conversion."

Demian says that proprietary library systems are generally very costly. "And many do not offer the same high level of functionalities that are included for free in Koha."

Curator Hurtrel-Pizarro adds that the main reason the library prefers to use open source is that "this software increases in value because of its dynamic and collaborative development."

More information:
Bamboo news item (in French)
Bibliothèque Universitaire de l’Institut catholique de Toulouse
Koha
PMB (formerly PhpMyBibli)