As a librarian, I had to implement an open source library management system in my library. I started with Evergreen (some one suggested to do so). It was so simple and also had nothing. It simply did not meet the requirements of my library. I would like to mention that my library is in a Engineering school.
I got vexed up and moved on to Koha. I still do not know why the developers chose Perl. As a librarian I thought I should not get into technical details. I installed it and started using it. To use Koha I had to first learn MARC21. I felt it was a good system initially. But as I got into Circulation, Acquisitions and Serials Management I felt it was very weird. I started to doubt in myself whether I was too much taken away with my requirements.
At this point of time in 2008 January I heard that NewGenLib was made open source. I was already tired of experimenting with open source softwares. There was a great appreciation for NewGenLib and its features. I was very skeptical about using it. Once I made a search on NewGenLib v/s Koha, I even saw a post from someone seeking to migrate from NewGenLib to Koha. I was happy that I did not move to NewGenLib.
At this time one of my friends (who happened to be a NewGenLib enthusiast) installed NewGenLib on my computer and asked me to try it. So my colleagues and myself thought we will give a test try. As we did not want to burn hands as it happened with Koha and Evergreen. We were so impressed with the test drive that we thought we would give NewGenLib a try. Each and every requirement of my library has been handled by NewGenLib. It was so user friendly and at the same time its functionality is very comprehensive. It has been over a year that I have been using NewGenLib. I would say its a WOW product. Though I confess that its installation procedure is a little complicated for the beginners (who are used to clicking of Next button).
I thought I should write a comparison between NewGenLib and Koha. Since I used both of them extensively. Without any doubt I can say that NewGenLib is the best open source integrated library system available. I felt its very much better that many of commercial softwares available. In my next posting I will be presenting the differences in detail.
I got vexed up and moved on to Koha. I still do not know why the developers chose Perl. As a librarian I thought I should not get into technical details. I installed it and started using it. To use Koha I had to first learn MARC21. I felt it was a good system initially. But as I got into Circulation, Acquisitions and Serials Management I felt it was very weird. I started to doubt in myself whether I was too much taken away with my requirements.
At this point of time in 2008 January I heard that NewGenLib was made open source. I was already tired of experimenting with open source softwares. There was a great appreciation for NewGenLib and its features. I was very skeptical about using it. Once I made a search on NewGenLib v/s Koha, I even saw a post from someone seeking to migrate from NewGenLib to Koha. I was happy that I did not move to NewGenLib.
At this time one of my friends (who happened to be a NewGenLib enthusiast) installed NewGenLib on my computer and asked me to try it. So my colleagues and myself thought we will give a test try. As we did not want to burn hands as it happened with Koha and Evergreen. We were so impressed with the test drive that we thought we would give NewGenLib a try. Each and every requirement of my library has been handled by NewGenLib. It was so user friendly and at the same time its functionality is very comprehensive. It has been over a year that I have been using NewGenLib. I would say its a WOW product. Though I confess that its installation procedure is a little complicated for the beginners (who are used to clicking of Next button).
I thought I should write a comparison between NewGenLib and Koha. Since I used both of them extensively. Without any doubt I can say that NewGenLib is the best open source integrated library system available. I felt its very much better that many of commercial softwares available. In my next posting I will be presenting the differences in detail.
