DATE: 5/14/07

FROM: Crawford County Federated Library System

TO: Members of the media

CONTACT:John Brice System Administrator jbrice@ccfls.org

SUBJECT:Koha User Group Organizational Meeting

An organizational meeting of users of the Koha Integrated Library System (ILS) will be held during the American Library Association Convention in Washington D.C. The meeting will be held June 24, 2007 at 1:00 pm at the Best Western Georgetown Hotel and Suites (see below for address).

Koha is an Integrated Library System written using the open source model. Libraries from around the world have contributed to develop an ILS that can be distributed freely throughout the world. Libraries across the US are now starting to implement the Koha ILS. To gage whether there is sufficient interest in forming a Koha User Group CCFLS has developed an on-line interest survey.

The survey is located here

Please feel free to fill the survey out, if you do not plan to attend the Organizational Meeting.

The purpose of the organizational meeting will be to introduce other users of the Koha ILS and review of the Koha ILS Interest Survey. If sufficient interest in forming a formal group is expressed then the meeting may develop an action plan for future tasks and actions.

The Meeting is being sponsored by a new user of the Koha ILS the Crawford County Federated Library System located in rural northwest Pennsylvania. Anyone needing additional information should contact John Brice at the Meadville Public Library 814-336-1773.

Location of the meeting:

Best Western Georgetown Hotel and Suites
1121 New Hampshire Ave. NW
Washington D.C.
(Located two blocks from the Foggy Bottom Metro Station)

Sarah Houghton is the e-Services Librarian for Marin County Free Library, President of the California Library Association’s Information Technology Section, serves on LITA’s Top Technology Trends Committee, and is a consultant instructor for the Infopeople Project. If you know what’s good for you, read her blog about libraries and technology, Librarian In Black.

In the past few years the use of print encyclopedias has fallen dramatically. But, at the same time, the on line encyclopedia called Wikipedia has become one of the top ten web sites. What is interesting about Wikipedia is that all of the articles are generated by anyone who wishes to spend the time and effort to write one. Though this method is unorthodox, compared to traditional encyclopedias, it has produced a pretty effective encyclopedia. The Washington Post article Death by Wikipedia: The Kenneth Lay Chronicles illustrates some of the issues using Wikipedia, especially for controversial information.