Open Fifth is privately owned by its founders and ByWater Solutions

View all featured content about Open Fifth

March 4, 2026. The Marine Biological Association chooses Koha open source library management system, hosted and supported by Open Fifth. The Marine Biological Association has chosen Open Fifth to host and support their Koha library management system to manage their collection at the National Marine Biological Library (NMBL). Open Fifth has migrated the system and will provide ongoing services to the Marine Biological Association to ensure its success in supporting these collections into the future.

February 26, 2026. ByWater Solutions partners with Open Fifth to streamline SFTP management to Koha community users. ByWater Solutions, an open source community contributor and America's forefront provider of open source library technology support, announced today that they have partnered with Open Fifth to streamline SFTP Management to Koha Community Users. This new feature now includes an administration interface for managing FTP and SFTP server connections, eliminating the need to duplicate connection details across different parts of the system.

February 13, 2026. ByWater Solutions partners with Open Fifth to simplify SIP administration to Koha community users. ByWater Solutions, an open source community contributor and America's forefront provider of open source library technology support, announced that they have partnered with Open Fifth to simplify SIP Administration to Koha Community Users. This feature includes a new SIP2 module that allows staff users with SIP2 permission to manage SIP2 institutions, accounts, and system preference overrides directly in Koha Administration.

January 22, 2026. Danskernes Historie Online chooses Koha open source library management system, hosted and supported by Open Fifth. Danskernes Historie Online has chosen Open Fifth to host and support their Koha library management system. Open Fifth migrated the system in December 2025 and will provide ongoing hosting and support services to Danskernes Historie Online to ensure its success in supporting these collections into the future.

November 5, 2025. Beyond the Summer reading challenge: engaging library patrons with Aspen Discovery. Open Fifth is pleased to share details of the continued development of the ‘community engagement module' for Aspen Discovery, allowing libraries to run campaigns, challenges and rewards within their library discovery system. The development has been led by Open Fifth and was first introduced earlier in 2025, with further tailoring to meet the specific needs of UK libraries.

July 2, 2025. Heythrop Library chooses Koha open source library management system, hosted and supported by Open Fifth. Heythrop Library has chosen Koha as its new library management system to replace the previous system. Open Fifth has implemented the new system and will provide ongoing hosting and support services to Heythrop Library to ensure its success in supporting these collections into the future.

June 26, 2025. The Homosaurus, an LGBTQ+ linked data vocabulary, is now available in Koha. Pride has arrived in Koha this month through a new plugin, the Homosaurus. The Homosaurus is an inclusive vocabulary for describing LGBTQ+ resources within the collections of libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions.

May 27, 2025. Norwich BioScience Institutes chooses Koha open source library management system, hosted and supported by Open Fifth. Norwich BioScience Institutes has chosen Open Fifth to host and support their Koha library management system. Open Fifth launched NBI's Koha system in 2012, with support until 2018 when NBI opted to self-host and support with their internal IT resources.

May 8, 2025. Open Fifth achieves ISO/IEC 27001 recertification, securing customer information and business continuity. Open Fifth announced its recertification to the globally-recognised leading Information Security Management Systems Standard ISO/IEC 27001. This also represents the company's first assessment against the updated version ISO/IEC 27001:2022. Open Fifth's Certificate of Registration is publicly available online. The certification audit was undertaken in May 2025 by the UKAS-accredited British Assessment Bureau, in which Open Fifth demonstrated conformity to every applicable requirement of the Standard.

March 26, 2025. PTFS Europe announces company name change to Open Fifth. PTFS Europe, a leading UK provider of open source library solutions, announces its change to the new company name of Open Fifth. Effective from 25 March 2025, the company is operating under the registered name of Open Fifth Limited (known as ‘Open Fifth') for all purposes, including legal, financial, operational and social. This exciting transformation marks a new chapter in the company's evolution since its founding in 2007, and the final stage of the rebrand initiated in 2022.

Mar 26, 2025 PTFS Europe changes company name to Open Fifth.
PTFS Europe has changed its company name of Open Fifth. Effective from 25 March 2025, the company is operating under the registered name of Open Fifth Limited for all purposes, including legal, financial, operational and social. This exciting transformation marks a new chapter in the company's evolution since its founding in 2007, and the final stage of the rebrand initiated in 2022.

Nov 2007 PTFS Europe founded by Nick Dimant and Jonathan Field as distributor for ArchivalWare
Nick Dimant (Managing Director) and Jonathan Field (Technical Director) announced the launch of PTFS Europe, a company formed to distribute and support the software products of PTFS, Inc., the leading provider of digital arching solutions in North America. The flagship PTFS product is ArchivalWare, a web-based, full-text search and retrieval system for digital libraries.

2026 Open Fifth Accomplishments Narrative

Our major change to report this year was our company name change from PTFS Europe Limited to Open Fifth Limited. This recognises our clear commitment to our work supporting and developing open source software for libraries which accounts for more than 95% of our turnover.

In 2025, we have been involved with new Koha installations across all sectors - academic, public, special and government. UK hospital library system migrations continue to be very important for us and at the end of 2025 we started migration projects to move the last two English regional consortial systems in the NHS over to Koha from their legacy systems. We are also implementing Metabase in these regions. The Aspen Discovery platform is continues to make inroads with Public libraries despite ever tighter budgets and it has been key to the completion of a major ILS migration which we completed for a bi-borough consortium in London as well as a large single authority system in the South East of England. Both of these organisations are using Koha and Aspen together as well as Metabase and are both investing in development services.

Creative sourcing of funding streams has enabled our development team to add substantial feature development projects to both the Koha and Aspen projects.

We continue strongly as the only significant support company in the UK with a specialism in implementing open source solutions in libraries.