On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Sharon Primm-Dayot wrote:
Hello Pat.
Thank you so much for your interest in the library that is being created in El Roble. I am a friend and partner with Marlene (whom you read about in the paper)and I am so very encouraged by the response that we've had from the PI's story. It's heartwarming to know that so many people want to help with such a wonderful and worthwhile project.
I'm glad to hear you've received such a positive response. It seems that people are very interested in doing good things, they just need a bit of motivation (like seeing an article about a neat project).
Koha also sounds like a wonderful and needed project. And it certainly sounds like something we would love to talk to you about! Anything that can help to provide efficient and quality library service for the people of rural Mexico causes us to pay attention.
I'd love to talk with you about it. Either by email, or in person. I'm currently looking for a new consulting contract, so I have some time available. I've included a bit of additional information below, and am Cc:ing this email to our development mailing list. Hopefully we can generate some additional discussion.
I briefly checked out the Web sites that you referred to us. Thank you! Am I understanding correctly that your service will help us provide an on-line library system that would fit our library specifically? Any further information that you can share with us would be greatly appreciated.
I think Koha would make an excellent system for a rural Mexican library. It isn't ready for playing that role yet though. The biggest things that need to be done are: 1) translation of the documentation into Spanish. We currently have one volunteer to work on this (a librarian from Chile), unfortunately he hasn't been heard from since his initial offer. There are two kinds of documentation that require translation; librarian oriented and support/IT oriented. These will require slightly different skills of the translators. I'm hoping to work with the Callimachus Group, <http://www.callimachus.org>, to write a grant request to hire a couple of translators to perform this work for us. 2) a templated version of the OPAC (Patron) and CIRC (Librarian) systems needs to be completed. We hope to have this work done within the month. Another group is already working with pre-release versions to do a translation into French. (They are actually working with some of our french developers, so this is quite a boon for us.) I'm a volunteer (as are most of the people working on the Koha project), but would be happy to help make Koha work for your needs. I think this can be done without a great deal of effort. A gentleman from Nigeria is currently working to install Koha for his local library and things are proceeding nicely, so there seems to be some momentum building.
I wish you success with your project! And I hope that there can be collaboration between our two worthwhile endeveours in the future. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have questions.
Thank you, I hope that El Roble's library becomes a reality in the near future. I think that there is a lot of room for us to help you meet that goal, and that we will benefit from the work that's done. Thanks, -pate Pat Eyler Kaitiaki/manager the Koha project
Sincerely, Sharon Primm-Dayot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sharon Primm-Dayot EOP Bridge Academic Administrator Instructor: Instructional Center & Upward Bound Trainer: TRIO Training
University of Washington Box 355650 - 1307 NE 40th Seattle, WA 98105 Office:(206) 543-4240 Fax:(206) 616-9092
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