Ari Mäkiranta
Ari Mäkiranta is a CEO at Koha-Suomi Ltd. He has been involved in open source projects in Finnish public libraries since 2010. He led the project that resulted in the first Finnish public library to go live with Koha (Joensuu public library June 2014). He now leads Koha-Suomi Ltd. The company is owned by about 100 Finnish municipalities. The company provides maintenance and development services for public libraries in those municipalities.
Catch me at Kohacon20
Day 2, 2:30-2:55pm: Unique Koha co-operation - Ari Mäkiranta, Koha-Suomi Ltd and Esa-Pekka Keskitalo, National Library of Finland (live, online)
This presentation will demonstrate co-operation between the libraries that use Koha in Finald. The co-operation covers all library sectors: national, academic, and public. Koha-Suomi Ltd is owned by almost 100 municipalities and purpose of the company is to organise Koha services to public libraries. The academic libraries have the organisation of their own. This organisation and Koha-Suomi Ltd have a keen co-operation relationship to develop Koha for Finnish libraries. For example, the system developers communicate daily and have meetings together at least once a week. The presentation will also describe how the co-operation works at the different levels of the organisations (library directors, admin, and library staff).