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Official Koha Newsletter: Volume 1, Issue 2: February 2010
by Nicole Engard 15 Feb '10

15 Feb '10

Hello all, The second issue of the Official Koha Newsletter has been released. You can read it here http://koha-community.org/koha-newsletter-volume-1issue-2-february-2010/ and you can read all newsletters here: http://koha-community.org/category/koha-newsletter/ . The plain text version is pasted below: ------------- Official Koha Newsletter Volume 1, Issue 2: February 2010 Table of Contents * Learning o Teaching Koha in Library School o Koha Training Videos * Koha Development o New Recommendations Feature o Full Git Stats for Koha o WordPress Plugins for Koha * Koha News o Koha in Norway o The Acquisition that Didn’t Happen o The Nelsonville Public Library chooses ByWater Solutions * Koha Community o February IRC Meeting Summarized o Koha Community Rocks Learning Teaching Koha in Library School by Thomas Krichel One problem with OSS in libraries is lack of education. As a library school professor, I am trying to help. In January, I ran an intensive course. Students, without any previous system administration experience, installed Debian, then rented Debian servers (since we can’t host the servers at the school) and then installed Koha. All 17 students managed to do it. For what it’s worth, I am making my syllabus available (http://openlib.org/home/krichel/courses/lis508p10w/) with slide presentations, and the installation documentation. I have not seen the course evaluations yet, but I believe it was a success. Koha Training Videos by Nicole C. Engard In December I gave two tutorials to librarians in California. Both of these training sessions were recorded and the recordings made available to all: * Introduction to Koha: OPAC & Circulation In this archived webinar, Nicole Engard, Director of Open Source Education introduces attendees to the first open source web-based integrated library system – Koha. This first of a two part series covers the features of the OPAC as well as managing patrons and handling circulation functions. This webinar was originally presented on December 17, 2009 * Introduction to Koha: Cataloging & Advanced Functions In this archived webinar, Nicole C. Engard, Director of Open Source Education and a professional cataloger walks librarians through the cataloging functionality within the first open source web-based integrated library system – Koha. In addition to the cataloging overview, attendees are shown how to handle some of the advanced functionality within Koha, such as, Serials, Acquisitions and System Preferences. This webinar was originally presented on December 21, 2009. Also the question and answer sessions were archived in the Q&A part of the site. Koha Development New Recommendations Feature by Mark Osborne Ever been stuck for a good read? Ever said to a librarian ‘I really like this book; have you got anything similar?’ Well now Koha can help you find the perfect read every time. Albany Senior High School recently had Chris Cormack of Catalyst IT write a recommendations feature for Koha. If you go to http://library.ashs.school.nz/ and search for a book you enjoyed reading, go into the details page and you’ll notice a link called ‘Recommendations’. If you click this link, you’ll see ‘X people who read this also read … ‘ and a list of other items in the catalogue. What this allow patrons to do is visit the details page of their favourite book and see what other patrons with similar tastes have read. It works for all item types too, so patrons can discover new magazines, DVDs and sheet music as well as books. The recommendations feature only works for libraries who don’t anonymise their patron data and of course the larger your collection and borrowing data, the better the recommendations get. Albany Senior High School only has a few thousand items and several hundred patrons, and it’s only been open for one year, but as the borrowing data builds up, it’ll be a very useful tool for helping people find just the right book. Long-term, we’d love people to pick up this feature and extend it so that it might be able to look through your entire borrowing history and make personalised recommendations for you. Now wouldn’t that be nice? A professional ‘good reads’ finder working for you around the clock! Keep an eye out for the Recommendations feature, it didn’t make it in before the 3.2 feature freeze, so it will be in 3.4! For now you can find it in the public Catalyst Git Repo (http://git.catalyst.net.nz/gw?p=koha.git;a=summary) Full Git Stats for Koha by Chris Cormack So after the great article by Eric Hellman on his blog about the copyright to Koha code I decided to learn about subtree merging so I could combine the old koha repo, with the new one. That way instead of having the stats broken into 2 different ones, pre 2000 and post 2000, I can generate stats for the whole of the history of Koha. Github has a great tutorial that I’m not going to repeat here. But if you follow it, you will end up with a repository that combines as many other repositories as you need. So here’s the stats report. Some interesting things: * If you look at at the activity tab, you can see that we have pretty even coverage for all 24 hours of the day. * If you look at the general page you will see we average 3.2 commits a day .. doesn’t sound that much until you realise that is 3.2 commits average for 3755 days!! * Out of the last 32 weeks, there is a only a single week where commits dipped into single figures So whatever might be happening elsewhere, main trunk development of Koha is as strong as ever. Tis good to see. WordPress Plugins for Koha by Liz Rea The Northeast Kansas Library System would like to announce the contribution of two widgets for WordPress based library (or personal!) websites: Koha Search Widget and Koha Login Widget. These WordPress plugins allow any WordPress 2.8+ site to easily add catalog search and login boxes to the widget space of any “widget ready” WordPress theme. Configuration is simple: the WordPress admin user only has to know the URL of their Koha catalog and the plugin handles the rest. Download the plugins from the WordPress plugin repository at the following links: * Koha Search Widget: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/koha-search-widget/ * Koha Login Widget: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/koha-login-widget/ The plugins were originally developed for the State of Kansas’ My Kansas Library on the Web project (http://www.mykansaslibrary.org) and are released under the GPL2+ license. Koha News Koha in Norway by Magnus Enger Norwegian libraries and librarians are slowly waking up to the fact that there is a new alternative in the ILS marketplace. So far one library has converted completely from a proprietary system to Koha: The Library of the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, led by Thomas Brevik (http://lib1point5.wordpress.com/) Their OPAC is at http://sksk.bibkat.no/ There are three more libraries that have committed to Koha: * The Norwegian council for folk music and folk dance (http://www.rff-sentret.no/index.php?lang=en) is using Koha internally for keeping track of a collection of some 10.000 books. * One school that teaches according to the Waldorf pedagogy is in the process of adopting Koha, but have not gone live yet. * One county library is going to use Koha for a collection of about 1.000 movies that it will lend to the libraries in it’s county, but they are not live yet either. Enthusiasts led by Thomas Gramstad and Axel Bojer secured funding for translating Koha into Norwegian (both dialects: “bokmål” and “nynorsk”), but this translation is now slightly out of date and needs to be looked after. Thomas and Axel are planning to start an organization that will be able to apply for support to this project, as well as organize the fledgling Koha community in Norway. I am working on support for NORMARC, our local variant of MARC, in Koha. It works today, but needs some more work before it is complete. I hope to be able to contribute this work to Koha 3.4. The annual Norwegian library conference will be held in March, with 600-700 attendees, and my company (Libriotech) will have a stand there, to promote Koha and the services it can provide. Nicolas Morin from BibLibre will also be present, to lend a hand in convincing Norwegian librarians that Koha is a good alternative to the proprietary systems they are used to. The Acquisition that Didn’t Happen compiled by Nicole C. Engard With the announcement last month that PTFS would acquire LibLime came many comments from librarians, Koha community members, customers of the two companies and even those from outside the library world. Most of these included words of hopes for the continued open future of Koha. Two days before the publication of this newsletter we were informed that this acquisition fell through, but I had already compiled a list of comments – most of which are very optimistic – and I thought it was necessary to share these comments with you all so that we can all remember that we’re in this together. Breeding, Marshall. “LibLime Acquisition by PTFS Marks a New Era for Koha.” Library Journal, January 13, 2010. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6714841.html. Cormack, Chris. “PTFS acquires Liblime.” Korerorero, January 14, 2010. http://blog.bigballofwax.co.nz/2010/01/14/ptfs-acquires-liblime/. Engard, Nicole. “So much Koha news today.” What I Learned Today…, January 13, 2010. http://www.web2learning.net/archives/3478. Haydock, Ian. “PTFS to acquire Liblime.” Meeting on the ledge, January 14, 2010. http://ianhaydock.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/ptfs-to-acquire-liblime/. Hellman, Eric. “PTFS to Acquire LibLime and Move to Library Systems Premier League.” go to hellman, January 21, 2010. http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/01/ptfs-to-acquire-liblime-and-move-…. ———. “Who Owns Koha?.” go to hellman, January 29, 2010. http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/01/who-owns-koha.html. Horton, Valerie. “Major Shake, Rattle and Roll in Koha Land.” Collaborative Librarianship News, January 13, 2010. http://collaborativelibrarianship.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/major-shake-ratt…. Ojala, Marydee. “PTFS Acquires LibLime, Expands Its Open Source Capabilities.” Information Today NewsBreaks, January 21, 2010. http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/PTFS-Acquires-LibLime-Expands-It…. Phillips, Lee. “A request to PTFS from Montana Koha Libraries.” Lee Phillips’ Weblog, January 16, 2010. http://leephillips2.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/a-request-to-ptfs-from-montana…. Ray, MJ. “The Koha Company-go-round.” Software Cooperative News, January 18, 2010. http://www.news.software.coop/the-koha-company-go-round/870/. Rea, Liz. “If all goes well, a bright new day for Koha.” Things I’ve Learned, January 15, 2010. http://wizzyrea.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/if-all-goes-well-a-bright-new-day-…. Shoemaker, Kristin. “Koha Optimistic That Forked Tree — And Troubles — Are History.” OStatic, January 15, 2010. http://ostatic.com/blog/koha-optimistic-that-forked-tree-and-troubles-are-h…. “What now for Koha: PTFS to acquire LibLime, new Koha newsletter out.” Blog. MmIT blog, January 15, 2010. http://mmitblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/what-now-for-koha-ptfs-to-acquire-…. The Nelsonville Public Library chooses ByWater Solutions by Owen Leonard On February 2 the Nelsonville Public Library migrated its Koha installation to ByWater Solutions’ cloud hosting. The Nelsonville Public Library, serving seven branches in Athens County, Ohio, was the first public library in the United States to implement Koha. Since 2002 we’ve been regular contributors to the project, taking full advantage of the Open Source process by contributing hundreds of patches for inclusion in Koha. We feel confident that our move to ByWater Solutions will facilitate the continuation of that full participation. This move gives us the building blocks we need for a successful Koha library: an up-to-date, 100% Open Source installation of Koha, direct access to our database for specialized data interactions and customized reporting, and a guarantee of personalized attention and community involvement. With ByWater’s help we plan to continue to help make Koha as good as it can be. Visit our catalog at http://search.myacpl.org. Koha Community February IRC Meeting Summarized by Galen Charlton The full log of the meeting today can be found at http://stats.workbuffer.org/irclog/koha/2010-02-09#i_387991. Significant news and updates: * Koha 3.2 beta will be targeted for release around 1 March. There is a bug squashing session tomorrow all day, all time zones in the #koha IRC channel. * Koha 3.0.6 is expected to be released in the next week or so. * The following people have been confirmed for 3.4 project roles: o 3.4 Release Manager: Chris Cormack o Documentation Manager: Nicole Engard will continue o QA Manager: Colin Campbell o 3. 2 Release Maintainer: Chris Nighswonger o DB Documentation: Zeno Tajoli o Bug wranglers: Jesse Weaver, Henri-Damien Laurent, CALYX o Translation Manager: Frédéric Demians * A vote for Translation Manager will be held tomorrow, 10 February 2010, at 19:00 UTC+0 in the #koha IRC channel * A call has been issued to update the default bug assignees, with volunteers to respond by the next general IRC meeting. * Nicole called for contributions to the upcoming newsletter by 14 February. * There was a discussion of the desire for more tutorials The next general meeting will be held on Wednesday, 3 March 2010 at 19:00 UTC+0. The Koha Community Rocks by Joann Ransom Early this month a Koha Community meeting was held to discuss, yet again, the community assets problem. The whole LibLime thing is still dragging everything to a near-standstill ….. But at the meeting, well the community just said enough – in the nicest, most polite way possible – we took back control of our community to make sure we had the tools we need to keep Koha rockin’ along. The idea was that it was just a temporary measure, just until the whole LibLime – PTFS thing was settled and PTFS had had time to work out what their customers want and what they wanted to do etc etc. And while we understood and were happy to give them the time they need to get their stuff sorted out, we needed to still be able to function as a community. The biggest problem over the last 18 months has been the lack of access to the koha.org site and having no way to expose the up-to-date Koha information, news, demos, documentation, pay for support options etc. Anyway, the big thing to come out of the meeting was the decision to make a new temporary website for the Koha community, to carry us through until we learn about the status of koha.org. We brainstormed names, voted, grabbed a domain and within a very short time – like a few hours – we have a community website again! irc has been an amazing place to be today. Developers and users and vendors all working together, volunteering support, hosting, mirror sites, content, testing – whatever they could and whatever was needed to get a Koha Community place up and running again. Liz Rea has done an incredible job on the website – and so fast! Newsletter edited by Nicole C. Engard, Koha Documentation Manager. Please send future story ideas to nengard(a)gmail.com

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Vote on 3.4 Translation Manager to be held tomorrow, 10 February 2010 at 19:00 UTC+0
by Galen Charlton 12 Feb '10

12 Feb '10

Hi, During the general IRC meeting today, we decided to hold the vote for the 3.4 Translation Manager tomorrow, 10 February 2010, at 19:00 UTC+0 on the #koha IRC channel. Two people have expressed interest, Frédéric Demians and Brendan Gallagher, but we're awaiting a proposal from Brendan. Brendan: please complete or withdraw your proposal for TM today. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton gmcharlt(a)gmail.com

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Summary of today's IRC meeting
by Galen Charlton 12 Feb '10

12 Feb '10

Hi, The full log of the meeting today can be found at http://stats.workbuffer.org/irclog/koha/2010-02-09#i_387991. Significant news and updates: * Koha 3.2 beta will be targeted for release around 1 March. There is a bug squashing session tomorrow all day, all time zones in the #koha IRC channel. * Koha 3.0.6 is expected to be released in the next week or so. * The folllowing people have been confirmed for 3.4 project roles: Documentation Manager: Nicole Engard will continue QA Manager: Colin Campbell 3. 2 Release Maintainer: Chris Nighswonger DB Documentation: Zeno Tajoli Bug wranglers: Jesse Weaver, Henri-Damien Laurent, CALYX * A vote for Translation Manager will be held tomorrow, 10 February 2010, at 19:00 UTC+0 in the #koha IRC channel * A call has been issued to update the default bug assignees, with volunteers to respond by the next general IRC meeting. * Nicole called for contributions to the upcoming newsletter by 14 February. * There was a discussion of the desire for more tutorials The next general meeting will be held on Wednesday, 3 March 2010 at 19:00 UTC+0. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton gmcharlt(a)gmail.com

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Re: [Koha-devel] [KOHA-Consort] Auto-barcode with leading 0's
by Chris Nighswonger 12 Feb '10

12 Feb '10

Hi Chad, This is really probably a question better directed at the Koha developer's list, so I'm cc'ing it along there. The problem here is due to a faulty barcode scaling algorithm in the label code. There is a bug open for it: http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=2409 I'm working on it at the moment and hope to have something better in place for the 3.4 stable release. Kind Regards, Chris 2010/2/9 Chad Petrovay <chad.petrovay(a)themim.org>: > Is there a way to have our incremental barcodes prepended with leading 0’s? > When the barcodes consist of just a single integer the formatting on the > labels is off. I would prefer to have this done programmatically, instead of > having to manually enter the leading 0’s. > > > > Thank you for your assistance! > > > > Chad Petrovay | Collections Database Administrator > MIM—Musical Instrument Museum | 4725 E. Mayo Boulevard | Phoenix, AZ 85050 > 480.478.6000 main | 480.478.6058 direct | 480.471.8690 fax | > www.themim.org > > > > _______________________________________________ > KOHA-Consort mailing list > KOHA-Consort(a)incolsa.net > http://lists.incolsa.net/mailman/listinfo/koha-consort > >

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KUDOS Virtual Conference - Looking for your opinions!!
by David Schuster 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

Tomorrow is the deadline for giving us your feedback on a virtual conference for KUDOS!! KUDOS is working to organize a virtual conference. This will be conducted over one or two days. Attendees will have the option of coordinating regional meetings in conjunction with the virtual conference. Participation is open world-wide. We need your help in planning this. If you are interested, please take a few moments to answer the following survey. https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dFU2Z2hNT3dPYnVsZzNY… Send us your suggestions and recommendations! David Schuster -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/KUDOS-Virtual-Conference---Looking-for-your-opinions%… Sent from the Koha - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Patron lists
by Joe Ellis 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

OK, So far I have been able to install Koha and upload the school's library MARC file, but I can't get Koha to accept Inputs for patron records either individually or in bulk, can someone point me to where I should look for clues as to why? Joe Ellis

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Cookie controlled CSS for J-OPAC
by Darrell Ulm 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

Hello, Quick question. If a button were made to set a cookie on the Opac labeled "Kid's OPAC" then feasibly the CSS included could be switched on the fly with the user controlled switch. This would allow all the existing code for the OPAC to work by just setting up a new CSS (for Kid's for example) and then using javascript check the cookie to determine if an alternate CSS is being used. This could save quite a bit of time getting a Kid's OPAC running, and the same cookie could be passed into all search functions to limit the search on some criteria (for example select only Kid's materials). Questions, Comments. Just an idea. -Darrell Ulm _______________________________________________ Koha-devel mailing list Koha-devel(a)nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel

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Linking Marc fields to custom table fields
by Toni Rosa 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

Hello, I have just posted a related question, but to keep it simpler I post a new message for this one. I wanted to show the field 17$a in the "normal" view of a biblio. I think I could do something like searching in the $record->fields structure until I found the desired 17$a field and then pass it back to the template inside the "catalogue/detail.pl"... But my question is, Is there a better way of doing it? Trying to solve it, I have also tried another approach that didn't work... I tried to add a field to the table biblio (named, for instance "17a") and using the "MARC Links" section of koha I assigned it to the 17$a MARC field. The problem is that it never gets informed even when the 17$a MARC field is perfectly filled for the biblio. I expected that whenever my custom field (the "biblio.17a" field I created) got filled, then as the "$dat" var that gets filled with the method "GetBiblioData" that returns all biblio fields, I could retrieve it from the template by name. In this case my question is, Is this approach completely wrong? Regards, Toni

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Where do we insert popularity ?
by Zeno Tajoli 09 Feb '10

09 Feb '10

Hi to all, this is a bug that need a preliminary discussion. 'popularity' is a way to sort bibliographic results of a search. In the Zebra setup this sort is based on a value, the value of all loans done with all items/copies of a specific bibliographic record. In NoZebra setup the valuse is calucated every time with an SQL query on loan data. In Zebra setup the source of the data is the column biblioitems.totalissues of the table biblioitems To use popularity with zebra we need to transer the value in biblioitems.totalissues to a specific subfield. Which subfield do we want to use in Unimarc framework ? The two unimarc defintion that we have (french and english) say: -- English: 990$0 -- French: 995$s But 995 is the unimarc field for items, for the values of the table items. The value of biblioitems.totalissues is connect with the bibliographic record, not with items level. So i prefer the English framework and to use 990$0 subfield to record the value of biblioitems.totalissues If you don't want to use 990, I suggest to use 942$0 (the subfield used in English Marc21 framework) Clearly we need to fix the french unimarc framework and the index definiton of Zebra (file ../etc/zebradb/marc_defs/unimarc/biblios/record.abs) So, what do you think of this proposal ? Thank you for your attention Bye Zeno Tajoli CILEA - Segrate (MI) tajoliAT_SPAM_no_prendiATcilea.it (Indirizzo mascherato anti-spam; sostituisci quanto tra AT con @)

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Koha Cookie
by Darrell Ulm 09 Feb '10

09 Feb '10

Hello, I would like to add a cookie to Koha to add sound (it is working on my test Koha instance). Should I just set the cookie or does the Koha source have an existing javascript (or otherwise) function to do this? Thanks for anyone who knows! -Darrell Ulm _______________________________________________ Koha-devel mailing list Koha-devel(a)nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel

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