Building a Consortium with Koha – Adventures in VOKAL, the first shared ILS in Vermont��Wendy Hysko – Brownell Library�Kim Peine – Dorothy Alling Library�Richard Pritsky – Carpenter-Carse Library
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Vermont’s state library agency did not have a shared system, some staff at libraries across the state wanted to change that.
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It all began in 2007…
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Many libraries in VT used Follett, which was lacking a lot
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A group of 9 libraries decided to pursue an open source ILS,
and provide the tech support themselves,
and Koha was the choice the group pursued
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Initially there were stand alone installations, with the idea
a shared catalog would be the next step
Richard met Brendan and Nate with their new company
Bywater Solutions at KohaCon in 2009, in Plano Texas.
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2010 brought the consortium version of Koha 3.0 which had consortia features
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And 2010 brought the beginning of the VOKAL Implementation Committee. Ultimately formed
after a long meeting about system preferences
that Kim, Richard and Wendy were the last at
the table (along with past Team member an SQL expert Amy Boisvert) and still engaged in the discussion.
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and the Consortium Committee – making sure we had input
from the different types of libraries – small, medium and large, and at the time schools, to set system preferences
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Other committees were Circulation
to come up with workflow and record sharing etiquette,
and Cataloging to create a baseline on expectations for records and how to share them.
Vermont didn’t have a delivery system,
and all libraries were stand alone.
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There was one group of libraries in Chittenden County that had a reciprocal borrowing agreement Homecard
a Reciprocal Borrowing Committee was created to navigate this challenge of a mix of libraries.
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How many hours did we spend trying to figure out how to have libraries share patron records, but not every library.
And with all the libraries having their own patron records, how to migrate
them in without a lot of duplication.
We got to bond with Ian from Bywater trying to figure out
how to manage this unique combination of stand alone and reciprocal borrowing libraries and records.
Our partnership with Bywater went to a new level launching this new shared catalog.
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Brownell, a Homecard library migrated to our Koha consortium catalog.
We had the biggest collection and professional catalogers, so we decided it was best to use our records and then other libraries could attach items to them.
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Everything was great until Dorothy Alling migrated in in October that year… we learned the independent branches preference did not work as we expected.
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The first year of VOKAL’s production system
migrated 22 libraries into our system.
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Upgrades needed to be more managed, going from a surprise overnight when they showed up, to needing to get away from that bleeding edge of changes, and bringing a group of libraries along
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We have sponsored some great developments, sometimes working with other systems that Bywater connected us with.
Some developments are now taken for granted, like a reports filter co-sponsored by MassCat.
Other developments have included adding an additional guarantor, circulating by groups of items types, improving the deduplication tool. Being managed by a group of librarian/tech volunteers instead of paid staff has given us a pool of development money that has helped us be part of the open source community through Bywater.
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Current VOKAL stats
Libraries: 66, with 3 branches; two more libraries
to be added by the end of 2023.
MARC records: 481,786 with 1,398,343 items.
Annual Circ (2022-23): 1,178,827 checkouts and 352,803 renewals
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We will have 68 libraries sharing our VOKAL system by the end of this year.
What have we learned?
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1. Having a sense of humor is essential.
2. A cohesive team of dedicated people from all walks of library life and open minds is imperative.
3. Not everything will go as planned, but having a great partner like Bywater is key.
4. Food is a great motivator.
5. When your co-volunteers become your fast friends, it makes late night texting more interesting.
6. Big data is messy.
7. You can pick a number to stop at for consortium size, but there is always just one more library, or three.
8. Children leaving home, babies arriving, COVID, things happen but migrations still go on…
9. Sometimes you have to say no.
10. Small, unautomated libraries need a lot of hand holding while large libraries have a lot of demands.
Pick your poison!