The Koha Gruppo Italiano is proud to present a new project for the development of Koha. Recently the community has shown a big interest in substituting Zebra with a new search engine. How this is done -- whether Zebra is replaced or complemented, etc. -- will determine the workload and necessary financial support. The Koha Gruppo Italiano wants to promote the project through a crowd-funding campaign, sponsorships, events, endorsements etc. The Koha Gruppo Italiano would like to bring together the community of developers to determine the possibility of introducing the new search engine, to set up the work flow, and to collect the funding necessary for the project. On March 11, 2014 the project will be presented in Marseille at the Koha Hackfest for evaluation. Important software editors/producers working for Koha, and others interested in the project will be invited. The project will be presented by Stefano Bargioni, Deputy Director and System Librarian at the Library of the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce. The goal is to discuss solutions, and propose ideas in order to take initial decisions. The project and its progress can be followed through the website <http://kohagruppoitaliano.moonfruit.com>, on FB <http://www.facebook.com/KohaGruppoItaliano> and on Twitter <https://twitter.com/kohagruppoit>. We are very interested to hearing your first impressions, your suggestions etc. about this proposed project. Please respond to this e-mail if you have any comments. Probably the best contributions during this early phase will be the definition of the fundamentals. Example: - Which search engine? - ElasticSearch, Solr or other (even if, at this time, the name of the initial project is ElasticSearch for Koha)? - Should the effort focus on complementing Zebra or on its replacement? - Subdivide the workload. - Draft a road map. We are grateful to all developers who will be contributing to our project. We hope that this project is seen favorably within the community, and specifically wish that the Librarian community worldwide see the benefits of this project and would be willing to assist us with finding financial support. Kindest regards, Franziska Wallner, Stefano Bargioni, Sebastian Hierl, Juan Diego Ramirez