Duluth, Ga., July 29, 2020: Equinox Open Library Initiative is honored to announce the successful migration of the Biblioteca Nacional de Puerto Rico, a division of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña in San Juan, Puerto Rico to the Koha Integrated Library System. They were one of two 2019 Equinox Open Source Grant recipients.
The Biblioteca Nacional de Puerto Rico was created in 1967, a division of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. In 2003 it became the National Library to preserve and provide access to resources related to Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans. Their migration encompassed 56001 bibliographic records. Equinox services included: project management, system configuration, extraction and migration of bibliographic data, and staff training. Equinox also provided Koha support, hosting, and auxiliary services.
"We are extremely happy and thankful for this extraordinary work," said Carlos Ruiz Cortés, Executive Director of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. "The catalogue is modern and very comfortable for research. It is also a great opportunity as we are implementing new services for our users, while promoting access to our valuable cultural resources."
The Equinox Open Source Grant was offered for the first time in 2019 providing Koha migration, support and training to two successful grantees. The grant was inspired by the vibrant open source community and the belief that every community deserves to benefit from an accessible and thriving library.
"Staff from the National Library and the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, led by Hilda Teresa Ayala-González, worked diligently for many months migrating data, making configuration decisions, testing, and training to prepare for the new system," said Jennifer Weston, Implementation Project Manager at Equinox. "The new Koha database inspired additional projects as the staff took advantage of the library's recent closing to launch a new website, and plan for a digitization project to be linked with Koha to coincide with the 65th anniversary celebration of the Cultural Institute. It has been both a pleasure and an honor to work with the Biblioteca Nacional de Puerto Rico to provide these new opportunities for their community."
To learn more about Koha and the expert services Equinox has to offer please visit https://www.equinoxinitiative.org/ .
About Equinox Open Library Initiative
Equinox Open Library Initiative Inc. is a nonprofit company engaging in literary, charitable, and educational endeavors serving cultural and knowledge institutions. As the successor to Equinox Software, Inc., the Initiative carries forward a decade of service and experience with Evergreen and other open source library software. At Equinox OLI we help you empower your library with open source technologies.
About Koha
Created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand, Koha is the first open source Integrated Library System to be used worldwide. The software is a full-featured ILS with a dual-database design (search engine and RDBMS) built to be compliant with library standards. Koha's OPAC, staff, and self-checkout interfaces are all web applications. Distributed under the General Public License (GPL), libraries are free to use and install Koha themselves or to purchase support and development services. For more information on Koha, please visit http://koha-community.org.