Dr Busiso Chisala, Technical Advisor to MALICO VSAT on the roof of Chancellor College Library, University of Malawi

ILS pilots

The eIFL-FOSS ILS project received a strong response to its call-for-participation. Applications were received from 12 countries representing 11 language groups, and from institutions ranging from 10 thousand volumes to more than 3.5 million volumes. The breadth of applications made the selection of a small set of pilots for the project very difficult, but eventually we arrived at the following sites.

Pilot sites

Each pilot institution will install and evaluate either the Koha or Evergreen FOSS ILS. The technical lead from each pilot institution will participate in an initial workshop to be held in Yerevan, Armenia on 10-11 June 2008. As the pilots progress from initial deployment of their chosen ILS, to evaluation of its suitability, and eventual migration of data, the participants will be working collectively on support documentation in order to gather their experiences and learning to share with each other and other interested libraries across eIFL.net. All libraries that submitted an application to become a pilot were invited to join the main email discussion list for the project so that they can continue to benefit from the experiences of the pilot sites throughout the life of the project. Case studies of each pilot's experience will be published in due course. The pilot sites are:

Koha sites:

  • An-Najah National University Library, Palestine (West Bank)
  • Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences, Armenia
  • Library of the Faculty of Medicine Pharmacy and Dentistry, University of Bamako, Mali
  • Mzuzu University, Malawi
  • National Scientific Library, Georgia

Evergreen sites:

  • Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, Nepal
  • Midlands State University Library, Zimbabwe

Program management

The eIFL-FOSS program manager is Randy Metcalfe. The eIFL-FOSS ILS project coordinator is Tigran Zargaryan. The Southern African Greenstone Support Network project coordinator is Repke de Vries. If you have questions about eIFL-FOSS or one of its projects, please feel free to contact us using the following email addresses:

Randy Metcalfe - randy.metcalfe[at]eifl.net
Tigran Zargaryan - tigran.zargaryan[at]eifl.net
Repke de Vries - repke.devries[at]eifl.net

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