Marshall Breeding has published the report of his Perceptions 2010 survey in which libraris report their satisfaction with their ILS and their ILS vendor. Of note, ByWater Solutions is rocking!
"ByWater Solutions did the best in the company loyalty department, placed third for ILS satisfaction, support satisfaction, and company satisfaction. ByWater Solutions provides support services for the Koha open source ILS."
Other open source products and service providers also did well including OPALS, an open source ILS created and supported by MediaFlex. OPALS ranked higher than Koha in ILS satisfaction and MediaFlex also earned top rankings in support satisfaction. OPALS is used in K-12 libraries.
Breeding reported "fairly low levels of interest in migrating to an open source ILS, even when the company rates their satisfaction with their current proprietary ILS and its company as poor." He noted that most libraries running a proprietary ILS did not express interest in moving to an open source ILS ; however, "a substantial portion of libraries that registered some interest in moving to a new ILS named open source products among the replacement candidates.
To editorialize....I find that libraries that don't take the time to learn what open source software really is say they aren't 'interested' in an open source ILS. Many of them have assumptions that are inaccurate. These misperceptions are at least partly fueled by their vendors ....<cough>Stephen Abrams<cough> ..... and the wider world of proprietary software companies.
As more and more highly satisfied libraries turn up in these rankings and more and more large systems like KCLS make the move, these perceptions will change. Even with their hands over their eyes, libraries will start to hear and feel the rumble of change.
Here's the full report:
