Southwest Educational Development Center (SEDC), working with the school districts in the region has successfully implemented a web-based open-source integrated library information management system called Koha. We currently have twenty three schools in Kane, Beaver, Garfield, and Iron school districts using the system. This project was originally funded in 2008 through the LSTA grant competition that is provided by the Utah State Library Department.
For these schools, Koha had been very robust, reliable and successfully implemented to manage all aspects of cataloging and circulation for the libraries. Several schools have also added their Take Home libraries and other Media Resources (DVD’s) into KOHA, this has allowed students and teachers the access to a larger variety of content to meet the different needs of students in the classroom. SEDC also provides ongoing professional development, technical support and a KOHA user group that works together across the districts to provide suggestions for improvement and best practices.
The participating schools benefit from this project because students and staff have the tools and resources needed to access and use media resources from school libraries at a significantly reduced cost to districts and schools. Each year we continue to add schools to the regional Koha system, saving the districts thousands of dollars. The schools in Millard district will be moving to Koha over the next couple of years as well as several new schools in Iron district.
For more information or for technology support please contact Chris or Cory.
Koha Manual (PDF)
