LibLime to Acquire CareAffiliates

LibLime Press Release:

LibLime to Acquire CARE Affiliates

Today at 9:47am

ATHENS, OH and BLACKSBURG, VA--July 29, 2008 -– LibLime, the leader in open source solutions for libraries and CARE Affiliates™ announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement to sell select assets of CARE Affiliates to LibLime. The sale will include select products, related services and domain names along with associated service contracts. Final closing is scheduled for August 2008.

Carl Grant, President of CARE Affiliates will be taking a new position as president of Ex Libris, North America, effective immediately. "I'm delighted that LibLime has decided to acquire these assets," said Carl. "This will ensure the continuation of these products/services well into the future. I look forward to seeing how LibLime grows these ideas. I also feel it's important to say that this sale and my move is based primarily on personal reasons and is in no way a reflection on the open-source community or service providers serving libraries. Open source has a vibrant future in libraries and I'm pleased to say that Ex Libris is one of the proprietary vendors listening to this community as evidenced by their recent announcement about their new Open Platform strategy. I will continue to stay engaged with the library open-source community, albeit in a different role."

"We've been proud to list CARE Affiliates as one of our strategic partners since they started supporting open source in 2007," says Joshua Ferraro, CEO of LibLime. "This arrangement gives us increased capacity to deliver open-source and open architecture solutions for libraries in the strategic area of metasearching."

LibLime's acquisition of CARE again highlights one strength of open-source solutions -- no vendor lock-in. CARE's customers don't need to worry about switching to new solutions. With open source, switching vendors doesn't mean switching software.

This is LibLime's third acquisition since the company's inception in 2005. Earlier acquisitions include Ohio-based Skemotah Solutions and Katipo Communications' Koha division in New Zealand.