Introductions

[Myka Kennedy Stephens]

Hi folks,

This group is only a few hours old and we've already got a dozen or so members. I thought I would start a thread to help us get to know one another, if that's something you're interested in sharing. If not, no worries.

I am the seminary librarian at Lancaster Theological Seminary, a small stand-alone graduate theological school in Pennsylvania (USA). We became a Koha library in December 2014 and implemented EBSCO Discovery Service in July 2015. We were an early adopter of the EDS API plugin for Koha because we really like the Koha interface and wanted our users to have the discovery experience in Koha instead of using the EDS interface. We implemented OpenAthens through EBSCO for authentication in February 2017 and were a beta tester of the OpenAthens plugin for Koha. 

I've shared my experiences with Koha, EDS, and OpenAthens at the 2017 Koha-US Conference (summary and slides) and the 2017 Leading Edge Libraries Conference (summary and slides), though I do not claim to know everything there is to know about integrating these two services. I am happy to share what I have learned and hope to learn from others.

As a mostly solo librarian, I have limited time to explore and tinker with settings and customizations. It is usually when I am preparing a presentation for a class or testing the system after an upgrade that I realize things aren't working quite right. I used to post questions to one of the Koha related listservs I subscribe to, but Koha/EDS libraries are a small subset of that group. It also occurred to me during my most recent exchange with EBSCO about the EDS API that we might be able to accomplish something if we start talking to one another about our experiences and hopes for EDS and Koha. That's what prompted me to start this group.

Now you know a little more about me and why I started this group. Thanks for joining and I'm looking forward to the conversations we'll have here!

Myka