Since April 24, 2022, we have moved to the latest version of Koha in our library thanks to Tamil, our now service provider. And above all, we have changed servers and search engines. We have even changed the presentation and design of our catalog and our notices, which are now more readable.
As a search engine, we are now using “Elastic search” which saves us valuable research time due to its speed and is a considerable improvement over Zebra.
We asked Friar Bernard Ntamak, o.p., library’s director, for some clarification :
Why did you make this change ?
We have been using the old version of Koha since 2008, renewed in 2019.
This change was necessary to update and to raise our library to the highest level of libraries using Koha.
Koha (= gift in Maori) is a free and open source community-developed integrated library management system, used by all types of libraries in many countries.
In short: we are on top with these improvements!
How and why did you choose this particular provider, Tamil ?
The presence of this provider is also a revolution!
It is a French company, expert in the deployment of Open Source software solutions, which is at the service of librarians and documentalists.
Their services, through 24/24 remote assistance, aim to offer the best of the innovations of the Open Source world with the guarantee of a commercial, reliable and professional customer service.
It is necessary today in the management of Koha to have a provider like Tamil to stay on top of librarianship.
How is the new search engine better today ?
Elasticsearch version 6.8.23 that we are using now (since April 2022) is an open data search and analysis engine (textual, numerical, geospatial, structured, etc.). Its advantage is that it is faster than other search engines such as Zebra that we were still using before.
The idea is to save search time by covering the widest possible field. For example, when searching for documents in a broad area, with the usual search engines like Zebra, you click and wait about 18 seconds to get the search result with a reduced scan.
With Elasticsearch, you will get the result in 05 seconds in a wider and more precise field!