20 January 2022. The Catalyst Koha team is excited to announce that Auckland University of Technology (AUT) has officially gone live with the Koha Library Management System!
AUT is the first university from New Zealand or Australia to implement Koha. Read more about why they chose Koha.
Close collaboration between AUT library staff and the Catalyst Koha team meant the project launched smoothly, and on-time, in early November, despite much of the four-month implementation being run during Covid Alert Level 3 and 4 lockdowns.
After two in-person workshops between Catalyst and AUT prior to the lockdowns, the rest of the project was run remotely. The project paused temporarily when Alert Level 4 was announced in August, to allow both teams to concentrate on providing pandemic support.
AUT Koha has integrations with a number of other internal systems including:
- VuFind, replacing Koha as the online public access catalogue for students and staff
- Self check machines
- Laptop kiosks
- Regular and automated processing of new student, staff, and associate users
- Online payment of library fines
- AUT student/staff app & Student Hub Online to display basic borrowing information
This project involved the entire Catalyst Koha team, and included server setup and configuration, data migration, development, training, and consulting.
Alex Buckley, Catalyst Koha's Implementation Lead for the AUT project, said "despite the difficult COVID circumstances, the project was wonderful. The AUT team were amazing to work with - enthusiastic, responsive, and friendly".
This is the first project the Catalyst Koha team has actively aimed to run in a te ao Māori way. The team worked with the AUT Library Māori Engagement Group to align values in order to build a deeper relationship with the whole team.
Kathryn Tyree, Catalyst Koha Services manager, said about the project "Working with the AUT team has been a highlight of our year. The library have been working towards growing their use of open source systems for years now, and it's been wonderful to be invited in to their programme of work. It feels like we will continue to learn a lot from each other, and hopefully encourage more libraries to own their future technology solutions, while keeping their system data and support in Aotearoa".
Craig Murdoch, AUT project manager, said of this project "Joining the worldwide Koha community and working with Catalyst has been everything we hoped it would be. We see the team at Catalyst as partners rather than vendors, and their commitment, skills and genuine approach meant our implementation was a real pleasure. We strongly believe that using Koha will bring significant benefits in terms of capability development, staff satisfaction and gaining the flexibility to control our own destiny. The future is exciting and we'd love to see more New Zealand libraries join us on the Koha journey."