Recently I received a call by a much harassed librarian friend. Her woes the company from whom she purchased library software for automation of her library has suddenly stopped software support. And as NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) were visiting her institute in few days and her software had stopped responding due to some technical glitch and it needed re-installation. Even after much persuasion the company didn't oblige as a result she had to take the help of her IT department people. Her problem must have got solved but it made me think that a Library after spending lakhs acquires a software and every year has to undergo maintenance contract from the company but if the company closes down or stops all support what will be the future of that software. 

Also I met another fellow Librarians who had stopped the AMC of their software citing problems like no regular updates been given by company so why should we renew contract. 

I began to do a little research as to what can be done to solve this problem. However no one can guarantee life long support because technology is forever developing. New technology is coming up making the old obsolete. What trend I have noticed among most of the librarian is that they are opting for open source software like KOHA. Even though they still have the library software the best option according to them to save their data and from any technical glitch is to migrate their data to Koha and have it on intranet. So one can even have a back up in Koha.  As the software is free only installation and data migration charges are applied. 

Koha Library Software is the world's first free and open source library system. Koha is a fully featured, scalable library management system. Development is sponsored by libraries of varying types and sizes, volunteers, and support companies worldwide. Koha works on a linux server. So a separate terminal is recommended for installation. Once the data is migrated to Koha web opac services can be provided to patrons. 

Koha is the most advanced and cost effective open source automation solution in the market and for this very purpose Librarians are now opting for it. 

I am not advocating that one should only use open source software for all library services, but with all the benefits that open source software holds it would be remiss not to consider opting for open source software.