Liblime

Infobox_Company
company_name = LibLime
company_type = Private
company_
foundation = 2005
location_city = Athens, Ohio
location_country = USA
key_people = Joshua Ferraro, President, Technology and Founder
Ryan Corrado Higgins, President, Products and Founder
Tina Burger, VP Marketing and Founder
industry = Computer software
products = Koha ZOOM
Koha Classic
Evergreen ILS
OpenNCIP
homepage = [http://liblime.com/ http://liblime.com]

LibLime (a division of MetaVore, Inc.) is a company dedicated to providing open-source software solutions to libraries and is the largest distributor of the Koha Integrated Library System. LibLime was founded in 2005 and has its corporate headquarters in Athens, Ohio. [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/about/careers|title=liblime.com - Corporate Facts|accessdate=2006-12-08]

The company is best known for its enterprise-class integrated library systems: Koha Classic and Koha ZOOM, though they recently began supporting additional products such as YakPac, Masterkey, as well as web services such as OpenTranslators. LibLime provides a wide range of services on these products including hosting, installation, migration assistance, staff training, development, customization and consulting services.

History

LibLime's capstone product, Koha, was the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS) and was originally developed by one of LibLime's partners, Katipo Communications, Ltd. The application was designed for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand in response to their need for a reliable, fast and affordable solution to the exclusively proprietary ILS software available at that time. Horowhenua went live with Koha in January 2000.

In late 2001, the Nelsonville Public Library System in Nelsonville, Ohio, began examining alternatives to their legacy ILS. Joshua Ferraro, now LibLime's President, Technology, was the Systems Administrator at Nelsonville and spearheaded the project of migrating the library to Koha. Nelsonville sponsored MARC support and went live with Koha in 2003.

LibLime was established in early 2005 to facilitate the promotion and support of open source software in the library market. All four founders comprise the shareholders and the board of directors of LibLime's parent corporation, MetaVore Inc. (LibLime is a tradename owned by MetaVore Inc.). MetaVore Inc., an Ohio corporation, was founded in January 2005. Since that time, Ferraro, along with the rest of the growing LibLime development team have contributed much to the open-source library community.

In 2005, Ferraro was selected as the official Koha Project Release Manager for version 3.0, and his first move was to propose and implement integration of a textual database engine (Zebra) to facilitate a more robust and scalable architecture and support for more complex search and retrieval operations. With Zebra integrated, Koha provides an enterprise-class ILS suitable for the largest libraries in the world, supporting tens of millions of records without performance degradation.

In 2006, LibLime acquired the assets of Skemotah, Solutions, a US-based Koha support company. In March 2007, LibLime acquired the Koha division of partner Katipo Communications, Ltd. Assets involved in the acquisition included existing support contracts with libraries that contracted with Katipo, copyrights and trademarks related to Koha, and the koha.org domain. [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/news-items/press-releases/liblime-to-acquire-katipo//|title=LibLime to Acquire Katipo Communications' Koha Division|accessdate=2007-03-13]

In July 2008, LibLime acquired select assets of partner CARE Affiliates, Inc. Assets involved in the acquisition included existing support contracts for OpenTranslators and Masterkey, as well as copyrights and trademarks related to OpenTranslators. [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/news-items/press-releases/liblime-to-acquire-care-affiliates//|title=LibLime to Acquire Care Affiliates |accessdate=2008-07-29]

Programs and Projects

Koha Open Source Integrated Library System

Koha is a full-featured open-source Integrated Library System (ILS) licensed under the GNU General Public License.

LibLime's primary contribution to the project has been overseeing (and implementing) the integration of Koha and Zebra. Zebra is a high-performance textual database that is now used for searching and record retrieval. This integration allowed LibLime to build a powerful search engine with some of the most advanced searching capabilities as well as one of the most scalable architectures available in library management systems today. [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/newsletter/2006/01/features/koha-earns-its-stripes |title=Koha Earns its Stripes|accessdate=2006-12-08]

The first library to go live with the Koha ZOOM product was the Nelsonville Public Library. Their online public access catalog (OPAC) is available at the following URL: [http://search.athenscounty.lib.oh.us http://search.athenscounty.lib.oh.us] . The system features search behavior and interface that mimics successful commercial search services. It also includes comprehensive advanced search options: full support for boolean and hierarchically-nested queries; searching by language, year and library-defined types; sub-type limits based on audience, content, and format which utilize coded values in the MARC record. Also available are re-sort and Amazon-style 'refine by' options. Additionally, users can sort their results by popularity, author, title, date published; narrow search results by branch, subject, or series title; and even limit to currently available items. [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/news-items/press-releases/koha-zoom-goes-live-and-it-rocks/|title=Koha ZOOM goes Live and it Rocks|accessdate=2006-12-08]

Other major contributions of LibLime include:
* extensive documentation for the project on both kohadocs.org and the project wiki: wiki.koha.org
* the integration code for the Koha - Zebra integration
* the Koha ZOOM search engine and search API
* Koha's Amazon.com module
* Koha's original Z39.50 Server
* wrote/maintain most of the MARC21 Authorities support in Koha
* implemented proper handling of MARC8 encoded data

OpenNCIP

OpenNCIP is a project initiative by LibLime to foster creation of an open source implementation of the ANSI/NISO Z39.83-2002 NCIP Standard for Circulation Interchange Protocol. Active development began in August 2005. The project also supports the SIP2 protocol. Notably, OpenNCIP is currently in use in the 252 library Georgia PINES Consortium and is the primary SIP2 component in both Koha and Evergreen ILS.

OpenTranslators

OpenTranslators is a web service offered by LibLime that provides access to over 10,000 databases using the SRU/SRW/Z39.50 protocols. This service, while not open source itself, is an enabling technology that allows developers to use open source federated search toolkits such as Pazpar2 to access licensed databases, free databases, catalogs, Z39.50, Telnet and proprietary databases. OpenTranslators was purchased as part of LibLime's acquisition of CARE Affiliates. [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/news-items/press-releases/liblime-to-acquire-care-affiliates/ |title=LibLime to Acquire Care Affiliates|accessdate=2008-08-09]

Koha with Class

Building on the success of a pilot program at Texas Woman's University in 2006, LibLime's Koha with Class [http://liblime.com/projects/koha-with-class] initiative provides library school classrooms with hosted installations of Koha, free of charge. [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/news-items/press-releases/liblime-launches-koha-with-class |title=LibLime Launches Koha with Class|accessdate=2007-03-08] [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/news-items/press-releases/koha-with-class-future-librarians-learn-using-koha-ils |title=Future Librarians Learn using Koha|accessdate=2007-03-08] The project has a very active following with dozens of college and universities participating [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/projects/koha-with-class/participants |title=Koha with Class library management system classes participating|accessdate=2007-03-08]

Evergreen Open Source Integrated Library System

Evergreen is an integrated library system originally developed by the Georgia PINES consortium for use as their automation system. It was designed from scratch for large-scale deployment in very large public library consortium environments with millions of records and hundreds of libraries.

LibLime was involved in the project since late 2005 having been retained by Georgia PINES to develop SIP2 support, improvements to the underlying PostgreSQL database, as well as perform quality assurance and load testing. [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/news-items/press-releases/georgia-library-pines-awards-contract-to-liblime/|title=Georgia Library PINES Awards Contract to LibLime|accessdate=2006-12-08] [cite web|url=http://open-ils.org/blog/?p=39|title=OPAC3, Authority Control, Prototype Statistical Reporting|accessdate=2006-12-08] [cite web|url=http://liblime.com/newsletter/2006/01/inside-scoop/events/american-library-association-annual-conference/|title=American Library Association Annual Conference|accessdate=2006-12-08] [cite web|url=http://www.bookism.org/open/2006/11/15/liblime-powers-koha-and-now-evergreen/|title=LibLime Powers Koha and now Evergreen|accessdate=2007-03-08]

Business model

LibLime operates on an open-source business model where the development process is steered by a community, rather than a vendor. LibLime customers take full advantage of this model by sponsoring enhancements that are then shared with the whole community. The result is very rapid development cycles, customer-driven features and a high overall Return on Investment.

Software that LibLime creates using this model is widely available at no cost, which leads to the misconception that the company "sells free software". LibLime sells services (e.g., hosting, installation, data migration, development, training and maintenance) that help facilitate the open-source process for libraries.

References

External links

* [http://liblime.com/ LibLime's website]
* [http://kohadocs.org LibLime's Koha Documentation Project]
* [http://koha.org Koha Project website]
* [http://openncip.org OpenNCIP Project website]
* [http://open-ils.org Evergreen Project website]