The Fédération des Alliances Françaises d’Australie has chosen CALYX information essentials to upgrade its Koha integrated library management system. Alliance Française has used Koha version 2.2 on an in-house server since 2005. The new Koha 3.0 system will be hosted off site at Calyx’ state of the art data centre.
Alliance Française is the highly respected global network for the teaching of French language and promotion of French culture throughout the world. The Fédération des Alliances Françaises d’Australie counts 31 associations operating under the name ”Alliance Française”. The network spans from Perth and Esperance to Sydney, Eurobodalla, Brisbane, Hobart and Darwin. The head office of the Fédération des Alliance Françaises d’Australie is based in Canberra. The Koha system hosts the libraries in Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth and contains 22,000 items.
According to John Anderson, Executive Assistant at Alliance Française Brisbane, the Koha system has met the libraries’ needs for compliance with library standards and stable operations, as well as providing a bi-lingual French/English OPAC, however the Alliance is looking forward to the advanced searching facilities, attractive user interface and other improvements provided in Koha 3.0. John stated: “With internal resources heavily committed to our core objectives of language instruction and conduct of cultural events, we required a partner with deep knowledge of Koha whom we could trust to deliver the upgrade effectively and on time. We are aware of Calyx’ long standing association with the international Koha project. It was a simple choice and we are very pleased with the result they have delivered.”
The Software as a Service (SaaS) model offered by Calyx will free the Alliance from the concerns of housing and maintaining the computer server and software as well as saving some expenses of hardware acquisition and maintenance. After a period of testing, the new system went live on 7 December 2009.
