Duluth, Ga., July 27, 2020: Equinox Open Library Initiative is honored to announce the successful migration of Spark Central of Spokane, Washington to the Koha Integrated Library System. They were one of two 2019 Equinox Open Source Grant recipients.
Spark Central was founded in 2016 when INK Art Space and the Spark Center merged to become Spark Central, a non-profit organization supporting the development of creativity, imagination and innovation by breaking down barriers to access. Their migration encompassed 2,717 bibliographic records and 5,021 patrons. Equinox services included: project management and system configuration in addition to extraction and migration of bibliographic, item, transaction, and patron data. Equinox also provided Koha support, hosting, auxiliary services, and staff training.
“Spark Central’s library offers West Central [Spokane] families access to technology, kits, books, and DVDs, but our old library system was cumbersome, frustrating, and was constantly having errors,” said Brooke Matson, Executive Director at Spark Central. “We did not even have barcodes to scan. Working with Equinox has been like night and day! Their team has been exceptional to work with and held our hand during the transition and data migration, going out of their way to customize our user interface. It’s amazing to have a system so accessible to our patrons and easy to use. It has super-charged our library lending power!”
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.
“I was really excited when we announced that Spark Central had received the grant,” said Rogan Hamby, Data and Project Analyst at Equinox. “It was even more of a thrill to be on the migration team as community libraries that are tightly integrated into the lives of their neighborhoods are important to me. At every step working with the Spark Central staff was a pleasure and their passion for their community came through in everything we did.”
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.
