Cases Study: Staffordshire University’s KOHA journey: Taking an integrated approach to supporting an open source library management system

In recent years Universities have had to make challenging decisions with respect to the choice of their library management system, and the best support framework required. With demands on return on investment and systematic organisational changes, leading in some circumstance to leaner approaches to library workflows, some universities are deciding to move away from onsite hosted proprietary LMSs, to Open Source (OS) solutions. This article provides an overview of Staffordshire University’s development of an integrated support framework for KOHA, an offsite hosted open source library management system, which the University implemented in 2011. Beginning with the history of the development of KOHA it will go on to describe the cultural and organisational changes Staffordshire underwent, post implementation, to provide an integrative support model, which includes its vendor, the open source community, staff at the University, and the evolving role of the systems librarian.