[Koha-devel] Koha as a federated library

[Bernard Shiundu]

Hello Anselm,

Don’t know if you got a response to this but the simplest way I see your requirements panning out:

1. Set the independent branches syspref (as you have done)

2. Use virtual hosting to have the different sites use different templates but the same basic application code and database which should allow you to have the different sites use different look and feel while still be able to do searches across the entire collection

3. You could sweeten things a bit by using the ‘SearchMyLibraryFirst’ syspref which would have OPAC searches return results limited by the user's library by default if they are logged in or go even further and hack the code to use branch IP for location as well as branch library (and of course submit the code back to community maybe ☺ )

Hope this helps

Cheers

Bernard Shiundu
Strathmore University
Nairobi, Kenya

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From: koha-devel-bounces at lists.koha.org [mailto:koha-devel-bounces at lists.koha.org] On Behalf Of Anselm Olweny
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 8:57 AM
To: koha-devel at lists.koha.org
Subject: [Koha-devel] Koha as a federated library

Dear Colleagues and thanks for the great work,

Below is content of a mail I posted to the koha list (Koha at lists.katipo.co.nz) but I have not been advised about the right and best way to go about this. I am sorry for posting this to this forum. Could someone kindly advise me on this. I need this advise in order to be certainly sure that I am doing things right.

I am setting up a federated library system using koha where each of the libraries needs to have its own look and feel and also should be able to search its own collection and also be able to search the collection of the other libraries in the federation by the users choice. I have also integrated koha into a CMS "joomla" in order to handle non koha pages.

In my koha set up I have created the different libraries as branches and activitated the IndependantBranches preference in koha. You can see this at http://koha.apkn.org (koha in Joomla) or http://koha.apkn.org:81 (Koha pure) or http://koha.apkn.org:81/cgi-bin/koha/opac-mainug.pl and http://koha.apkn.org:81/cgi-bin/koha/opac-mainke.pl (Independent libraries).

However, I am not sure whether this is the right way to set up federated libraries using koha. Could someone kindly advise me about the right way to set up federated libraries using koha?

Thanks

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