Terms & Conditions

What BBB does

BBB is engaged in implementing library automation along with data migration, customization, training, maintenance support and hosting for libraries ("the Services"), carrying on its activities across the world. As part of its strategic planning, BBB provides a web portal through which libraries worldwide can access these services free of cost.

A ten-year exclusive term, renewing automatically

BBB remains the exclusive provider of library automation services for each participating library for 10 years from the date of registration on the BBB portal. After this, the agreement can be extended repeatedly for further 10-year periods by mutual consent.

Either party must give six months' advance notice before the ten-year period ends; in its absence, the agreement renews automatically for another ten years. On request, a participating library can receive written confirmation that the service is provided free of cost, so that no GST or other tax applies.

What's expected from a participating library

While the services are provided exclusively by BBB without charge, the participating library must make a staff member available for 1–2 weeks, at its location, to self-learn to manage the library using Koha software, and must provide its book and reader data for automation.

The library irrevocably permits BBB to place advertisements on its pages, allowing BBB to recover its investment and maintenance costs. Both parties understand that free automation is feasible only through this provision, or an equivalent revenue source from the portal.

Connected libraries, shared knowledge

BBB recognizes the importance of library automation, connected libraries sharing data and books, and the value of bringing all libraries onto one platform for knowledge-sharing — national and global catalogs, book availability and metadata, including rare materials — serving students, researchers, faculty, educationists, administrators and policymakers alike.

Given its experience, BBB is committed to the 100% library automation and connectivity envisaged by the Government of India, contributing to national growth by automating libraries across India and the world, free of cost, using standard data centers, the open-source Koha library management software, open-standards RDBMS and the Linux operating system — and in doing so, helping libraries save substantial public money.

Standard Koha, kept uniformly up to date

BBB hires standard data centers for hardware, and hosted libraries are accessible from any location through a standard browser such as Firefox or Chrome. Libraries on the portal will not need to purchase server hardware, library management software, its implementation, costly bandwidth, or the maintenance and specialized manpower that goes with all of it.

The portal runs the full standard Koha module set — OPAC, Acquisitions, Patrons, Catalog, Circulation, Reports, Serials, Tools and Administration — on the latest stable Koha release, upgraded regularly in line with the Koha community's releases. Because the platform runs on open standards, catalog data can be shared easily across libraries.

What's shared, and how it's protected

The data displayed on the platform is publicly available book/journal metadata — ISBN, title, author, publisher, price, binding, page count and category. No book content is hosted, and all issue/return transactions continue to happen physically at the library, as before.

• BBB uses a secure, standard Linux-based server platform — the same foundation used by Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Oracle — with standard data-center-level security.
• Transactions require a unique username and password; all activity is logged, and logs are available to the library's authorized administrator.
• Uptime follows the cloud provider's SLA, typically around 99.99%.
• An offline-Koha feature is freely downloadable from the administration module, for use when bandwidth is down.
• A library administrator can download their library's data at any time; BBB additionally runs its own regular platform-wide backups for redundancy and fast disaster recovery.

BBB assures that platform data will not be sold or shared with any third party, except where legally required by law.

How the free service stays viable

BBB assures continuity of the automated libraries on its platform, funded by displaying two advertisements per page view, along with book sales from publishers and similar activities. This income belongs solely to BBB, and is necessary to keep the service running free of cost for libraries.

BBB commits that advertisements shown will be decent — free of violence, immorality or illegality — with BBB making all such decisions. Any user or library administrator can request that a specific advertisement be hidden, cancelled or banned if it's considered against the library's interest, and BBB will act on reasonable requests.

What's included at no cost

BBB provides the following to every participating library registered on its portal, free of cost:

• Training — video tutorials on public platforms like YouTube, linked from the library's support page, usable unlimited times at no cost. For instructor-led training, BBB promotes channel partners and mentors ("BuddyMentor") offering free or low-cost sessions, with costs mutually agreed between participants.
• Maintenance support — Koha tutorials, manuals and openly available videos for designated librarians, usable without limit or fee.
• Data migration — a standard ODS/XLS worksheet for bibliography and patron data, migrated free of cost and fully automated for a library's initial build on BBB Cloud (normally a service costing around ₹2.50 per record elsewhere).
• Bug fixes — any bug found in the Koha software is addressed by BBB in coordination with the Koha community's development plans.
• Upgrade communication — upcoming stable Koha upgrades and features are published via a blog on the Union Catalog, and may also be emailed to registered libraries.
• Uniform upgrades — all libraries on the platform run the same Koha version, applied uniformly to avoid data or software mismatch, with case-by-case exceptions for special customizations.
• Ready-made reports — 50 recommended SQL reports provided from the administration module initially, plus a reports-help page with hundreds of ready-to-use SQL queries. New report formats requested are built and delivered free of cost, typically within 2–4 weeks, subject to workload.
• OPAC templates — a choice of templates at registration, with each library able to add its own name, address and logo; super-librarians can later access more templates as BBB expands the library.
• Automated data entry — tools for adding new records free of cost, including z39.50 import and BBB's own International Union Catalog lookup.

How a new library comes on board

A library joining BBB doesn't need to buy server hardware, LMS software, or pay for maintenance or upgrades for as long as it stays hosted on the BBB portal. The library visits the BBB URL, fills in a registration form, and — after confirming by email and phone — receives its Koha-based library. From there, it can set up library rules, upload its data, and start using the library online without any payment for this process.

BBB adds every participating library's data to its Union Catalog, and, on request, builds a separate Union Catalog for institutions with multiple libraries, as per the list the institution provides.

Only when a library specifically requests them

Libraries can migrate their own data using BBB's free online tutorials. If a library instead wants BBB to handle migration directly from any format, this is charged at ₹0.50 per record, plus applicable taxes.