Kohn (a librarian) and McCloy (an "IT guy") describe their steps in converting from Sirsi to Koha at Arcadia University.
Undesirable features of the proprietary ILS included: requirement of a thick client; non-compliant web interface for end users; no access to catalog data. Hmm, that sounds all too familiar...
"Phased approaches prevent heart attacks." (McCloy)
Currently, Sirsi is still used as the back end, and data is dumped nightly into Koha. Redesigned Web interface uses Z39.50 to search Koha; migration to Koha OPAC is planned.
Working with IT took away the trepidation of migrating data; IT "does it all the time." "We can make your data stand up and dance!" (McCloy)
Kohn and McCloy stressed importance of regular IT/librarian meetings to sit down and troubleshoot problems; Kohn noted that the librarians got better at reporting specific problems, which greatly improved communication.
Server specs: running on Linux virtual machine running against MySQL and written in Perl; there are 147K catalog items. Server resources used are "significantly less" now, and this server also serves the Drupal-driven web site.
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