- Koha-devel - lists.koha-community.org

wiki discussion about free software and libraries (fwd)
by Pat Eyler 13 Jun '02

13 Jun '02

just seeding discussion, your two bits are welcome as well, -pate ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 11:36:37 -0400 (EDT) From: Pat Eyler <pate(a)eylerfamily.org> To: oss4lib-discuss(a)lists.sourceforge.net Subject: wiki discussion about free software and libraries I've just posted a short blurb about free software and libraries to <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FreeSoftwareForLibraries>. I'd encourage ppl to go and read it. Then edit, append, fold, spindle, or mutilate. The C2 wiki is home to a number of very smart people and is project, software, and community minded. I'd love to get them thinking about (and contributing to) free software in libraries. A healthy discussion about the topic would certainly draw some eyes. thanks, -pate

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Re: MyLibrary@NCState Important Update
by Pat Eyler 12 Jun '02

12 Jun '02

On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Rhyno Art wrote: > > > > Hi there, > > I'm the kaitiaki/manager of the Koha Project (www.koha.org) We just > > saw that NCState is phasing out of its leadership and support roles > > for Mylibrary. We're not sure what your status is in terms of what > > NCState provides, but we'd like to offer any help we could. The Koha > > participants come from a fairly similar background (a mixed > > business/nonprofit/govt/volunteer group) and also use Perl to write > > Open Source library related software. If we can be of any assistance > > in terms of your collective "next move", please don't hesitate to ask. > > > Hi Pat, > > Our paths have crossed on the "usr-lib-info" site and I have corresponded > with Steve Tonnesen about MARC in an RDBMS. I was intrigued by your offer > on MyLibrary and wondered if there were any other systems that you would > consider hosting. Hosting is probably not the right word, I'd be happy (as would some others I've talked with) to help MyLibrary (or other groups) get themselves running on Sourceforge or Savanah, help them build community, and offer advice or help. It may even be that some Koha developers (or companies) may want to help in the development of MyLibrary to add more depth and breadth to their koha offering. > I am giving a session on a booking system called WIBS > <http://wibs.sourceforge.net> on Friday at a preconference and have heard > from numerous libraries that are interested in this type of application. It sounds like this too may make an interesting adjunct to a Koha (or Avanti, or ...) system. > But I worry about the long-term care and feeding of this application, my > employer is sympathetic to the value of OSS but we are pretty stretched to > keep everything running and I have yearned for something like a "Red Hat" > in the library world that is more focused on OSS. I share your yearning, but I'd rather see another GNOME Foundation or Apache Foundation. If we could gather many small companies (like Katipo) who are interested in the library market, I think we'd be much healthier than having a single large company trying to drive the 'industry'. > I don't know what your > relationship is to Katipo Communications and whether there is a view > towards expanding its list of OSS options, but it strikes me that they have > the integrity to become a type of "Red Hat" for libraries. If someone is going to be the 'Red Hat', I think they'd do a good job. If there is going to be a coalition/foundation, I hope that they are a part of it. > > So I basically have two questions: > > 1) Would WIBS be of any interest to you? I will help other libraries out to > my dying day but it competes with many other priorities and I think a > company with roots in OSS could do wonders with the system. Plus, my > impression is that commercial options for internet station booking systems > are quite expensive so there is probably room for consulting if that is > the business model that any of your group desires/needs. I should mention > that it is based on MRBS and, by extension, PHP, I don't know if non-Perl > systems are problematic for you. > I think that there may be members of the Koha community who would be very interested in using/helping develop WIBS. Katipo may even be interested in working on it, though I am not a part of Katipo, and can't speak for them. As Koha rounds the corner on our current development efforts (1.2 and 1.4), it may make sense for us to look at developing a more turnkey library system with functions beyond OPAC, CIRC, and the like. At that poking at WIBS may make sense. As to the Perl v PHP thing, I don't know how other people feel about it. Personally, I'd rather we did all our work in Ruby ... but that's not going to happen any time soon. > 2) I have done a lot of changes to the database structure for Pytheas and I > don't know if it would be useful for you to take a look at the new schema. > Pytheas is very java-centric, but the table mappings are completely > generic. I think Steve looked at one of the original mappings and don't > know how out of date it might be. Steve, Paul, and Sergey may want to take a look at it. I know that they've done a lot of work on our schema, but there may be room for further optimization in either direction. I'll leave this to them. > > I am leaving in the morning for Atlanta and won't be back online until Monday, > but Koha is a great achievement and if there is anything I can do that > would help it along I would be glad to contribute. Enjoy ALA. I wish I were going to be there. We can certainly talk about contributing and/or cooperating/collaborating when you get back. -pate > > Regards, > > art > --- > Art Rhyno, Systems Librarian > Leddy Library, University of Windsor > Internet: arhyno(a)uwindsor.ca > Tel: (519) 253-4232, EXT. 3163 > FAX: (519) 973-7076 > WWW: <http://www.uwindsor.ca/library/leddy/people/art> >

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koha users
by Pat Eyler 12 Jun '02

12 Jun '02

I think it might be nice to put together a list of libraries using koha for the new website. Perhaps including a short survey for libraries using/considering Koha as well. What do you folks think? -pate

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about C4Connect
by paul POULAIN 11 Jun '02

11 Jun '02

I i'm right, every DB function begins by a $dbh=&C4Connect. Connecting to a DB is a HIGH time-cost function. The solution to this problem would be to have only one $dbh=&C4Connect at the beginning of every .pl script, this $dbh variable being used by every sub. One solution would be to rebuild all sub calls to add a dbh parameter, but i'm sure there is a solution to declare a global variable, which would be used if there is no "my $dbh" in the .pm sub... What's the best solution in Perl to do this ? ("our" may be used with packages, but what i want is to have the C4Connect at the beginning of every .pl script) -- Paul

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Manual Status Update....
by Nicholas Rosasco 11 Jun '02

11 Jun '02

http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/wiki/index.php?page=WishlistWorkspace Operator/Librarian Manual (HLT folks :) ) Rework Hardware info into IT Staff Section (Nick) Welcome to Koha msg (Pat) Pate -- paste below?(on Wiki) Configuration Case Studies (Nick, Steve/Chris/Si?) minifaq -> faq section (Nick) (This is cut and paste... no big deal) The above is the list of remaining items I'd like/need for the manual. Chris, Steve, _any and all of you_ running Koha in production, :) I'd like a "snapshot" of your current configurations, and thoughts/comments on what works well.... Specifically Hardware (Server) -- Processor/Memory/etc etc Supporting equipment for Network What is used in library (checkout, etc desks) and patron stations Link to catalog Support hardware (backups?, scanners for barcodes) Size of library & branches (what links branches to catalog, or is there a local catalog at each branch) How you deal with book mobiles, etc. Any other commentary you might have on supporting Koha? Nick

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pm structure : Acquisition.pm modifications
by paul POULAIN 11 Jun '02

11 Jun '02

the Acquisition.pm (aka : Catalogue.pm for MARC version) contains too much subs imho. It's hard to read, and not always very coherent : sub addwebsite { sub basket { sub bookfundbreakdown { sub bookfunds { sub bookseller { sub branches { sub breakdown { sub curconvert { sub deletebiblioitem { sub deletewebsite { sub delorder { sub findall { sub getallorders { sub getbiblio { sub getbiblioitem { sub getbiblioitembybiblionumber { sub getcurrencies { sub getcurrency { sub getitemsbybiblioitem { sub getitemtypes { sub getorders { sub getrecorders { sub getsingleorder { sub insertsup { sub invoice { sub isbnsearch { sub modaddauthor { sub modbibitem { sub modbiblio { sub moditem { sub modnote { sub modorder { sub modsubject { sub modsubtitle { sub newbasket { sub newbiblio { sub newbiblioitem { sub newitems { sub neworder { sub newordernum { sub newsubject { sub newsubtitle { sub ordersearch { sub receiveorder { sub updatecurrencies { sub updatesup { sub updatewebsite { sub websitesearch { It contains sub used to administer biblios (addBiblio, addBiblioitem, addItem, modBiblio...) and sub used to administer loans and orders. I propose to divide the script in 2 differents ones. the first would be Biblio.pm (used only for biblio management : biblio/biblioitems/items/additionalauthor/subtitle tables), the second would remain Acquisition.pm (Catalogue.pm for MARC) Is there someone against this idea ? -- Paul

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Bug to think about when working on the MARC database
by Chris Cormack 11 Jun '02

11 Jun '02

Hi all Currently there is a bug/feature in koha when it comes to searching for titles that have a ' in them. For example on http://intradev.katipo.co.nz/catalogue/ Title search for asta's Finds asta's book. Which is fine... searching for astas finds nothing. The HLT librarians and suspect most librarians would like the a title search for astas to find asta's book. An idea I had was to have another field in the biblio table, called search title, which has the ' and - , plus stopwords such as and, the etc removed. This is the field searched . Then I thought we might not want to restrict this to just the title, we probably want it for author, and subtitle etc. So I was thinking of having a separate table, that we used for searching, which was keyed by biblionumber back to the biblio table and had entrys like biblionumber,entry,type where type = author, or subtitle or title etc. Does this fit with the work being done with MARC ? are there better ways to do this? Chris -- Chris Cormack chris(a)katipo.co.nz Programmer 025 500 579 Katipo Communications www.katipo.co.nz

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Re: [PERL4LIB] MARC::Record addfields and field order
by Pat Eyler 10 Jun '02

10 Jun '02

On Mon, 10 Jun 2002, Ron Davies wrote: > Andy, > > I agree with Alan, you would ideally have two (or maybe three) options. > > 1) To add the field to the end of the block. > If I am adding a 3xx field then it should be written to the record so > it is the last field in the 3xx block, i.e. it follows the last field > with a tag beginning with 3. IMHO, this should really be the default > behaviour for add_fields(). Adding fields to the end of the record isn't > really MARC, though I am sure there are dozens (hundreds?) of > implementations that don't care. > > 2) To add the field to a particular position > Here it could be before a specified field tag and occurrence number, > or after a specific field tag and occurrence number.. but both options > would be even better. ;-) > > While you can certainly get the information from the fields(tagspec) > method, it might be nice to have a convenience method that would return > the number of occurrences of a specific tag as well, and which you could > then just plug back into the methods described in 2) above. > > Sorry about mentioning the w*rk*r**nd word. I'm implementing a new ILS > system to a tight schedule and I didn't want to impose my little > problems on the rest of you. Also I hate to disappoint, but we're only > using plain old vanilla MARC21. No Swiss chocolate at all. Ron, As you're working on an ILS system in Perl, I thought I'd ask you about your experience with Koha. If you haven't looked at us, please do <www.koha.org> and <http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/wiki/index.php?page=KohaProject> or come talk with us on #koha at <irc.katipo.co.nz>. If you have looked at koha and decided it didn't meet you needs, what was lacking? We're currently in the process of a mjor development push, and you may find that it is easier for you to get your ILS by joining forces with us. If you don't want to go that far, you may still find that cooperating on some tasks will lead to a better solution for you. thanks, -pate Pat Eyler > > Ron >

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more publicity
by Pat Eyler 10 Jun '02

10 Jun '02

(Georg Greve, the author of Brave GNU World, is interested in writing about Koha. He's asked that we fill out an information page. I've started working on it, but would appreciate feedback from any/all of you on my answers.) * What is it? Koha is a system for managing libraries (the kind with books in them). It provides a card catalog like interface (OPAC), with many forms of searching. It also provides managment tools for librarians, handling issues like: acquisitions, circulation, and patron information. * Who would use it? Koha is an appropriate solution for small to mid-sized libraries now (including home or office libraries should people so desire), and work is being done to allow it to scale up to large libraries in the very near future (state or national libraries). * Why would they use it instead of similar projects? * (Programming) language used in this project? Koha is written in Perl. * Special features/strengths? ***Someone up to writing a blurb here?*** * Special problems? Koha is in an active development cycle, pending changes may require DB modifications. Koha currently lacks a novice friendly installation tool. The documentation is also lacking right now. All of these issues are known, and work is being done to mitigate them. * Who is working on it? Koha is being actively developed by an interantional team. Pat Eyler is the current project leader, Chris Cormack is the release manager for 1.2, and Paul Poulain is the release manager for 1.4. * History of the project? ***Katipans, can you help out here*** * Plans for the close and distant future? We're planning on releasing 1.2.0 this week, with additional 1.2 series releases occuring over the next couple of months. In the fall we're going to release 1.4.0, which will include our internal use of MARC as well as additional improvements. For more details, please feel free to look at <pate.eylerfamily.org/geek/Koha.html>. * Do you need help? If so: of what kind? We're looking for Perl programmers, web designers, and documentation writers. Particular skills we need are: i18n/l10n, HTML::Template, MySQL/PostgreSQL, and a working knowledge of common library procedures and technologies (MARC, Z39.50, and the like). * Interesting/fun stories that might juice up the story? ***Anyone have stories that could go here?*** * Website/FTP addresses? http://www.koha.org * License?! GPL * Standard documents to read in this context? Please take a look at the koha website (esp. the FAQ) for information about Koha. <www.oss4lib.org> is a good place to learn more about Free Software in libraries. * Anything you would like to see mentioned? ***Thoughts, ideas, ???*** * Answer to a question I forgot? ***What's the favorite snack of koha developers? Or, is there something else that would be more worthwhile to put here? ;) NOTE: Everything you want me to read should be sent to me by mail because very often I will take my mail with me and read it where I don't have access to the net. > > Regards, > Georg > >

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Spam on the list
by Chris Cormack 10 Jun '02

10 Jun '02

Ahh what a pain, First piece of spam on the list. I guess I'll need to make the list members only post now. Do we have any big objections to that? Chris -- Chris Cormack chris(a)katipo.co.nz Programmer 025 500 579 Katipo Communications www.katipo.co.nz

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