I was just wondering if any SLIS graduate programs are using Biblios.net and the Koha ILS to teach basic and advanced cataloging?  I asked my former cataloging professor if she was going to use it and she said they were looking into it, but I haven't heard anything since.

I think it would be a wonderful educational tool; if you are currently in library school and about to take a Cataloging course, definitely inform your professor/instructor about these open source platforms...because unlike "normal" vendors, these are still free to use..."normal" vendors (Aleph, Sirsi, et. al.) have no financial interest in making available a training version of their commercial databases to library schools.

I took a face-to-face cataloging course and we dealt with print outs of MARC records, etc.  We covered LCSH and LCC as well but didn't have time to get to Dewey, which means I'm having to play catch-up in my current position in a public library.  My library school alma mater unfortunately separates training in DDC off in a separate course aimed at school librarians, and I wasn't able to fit that into my library school course of study.  I think I would have felt a whole lot more comfortable in my first library tech service job if I had had experience using Biblios.net and Koha while still in library school.  Sure, they behave differently than a normal, commercial ILS, but not *that* differently.  All ILS's have the same core functions, etc, and Biblios.net is sort of the open source equivalent of OCLC Connexion.

I hope the powers that be at Koha and Biblios.net do more outreach to Library educators and really advocate for the use of their open source product in educating the next generation of new catalogers currently in library school.

--John J. Ronald, MA, MLS

Alumnus, Univ. of North Texas, School of Library and Information Sciences '04.