[Koha-bugs] [Bug 604] New: problems with completely new installation of Koha 2

[bugzilla-daemon at wilbur.katipo.co.nz]

http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=604

           Summary: problems with completely new installation of Koha 2
           Product: Koha
           Version: 1.2.0
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Linux - Redhat
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Installation
        AssignedTo: tonnesen at cmsd.bc.ca
        ReportedBy: roger at hrothgar.co.uk
         QAContact: koha-bugs at lists.sourceforge.net


I am an English barrister, not a librarian. I am a reasonable good amateur Perl 
programmer. I want to use Koha for a small professional library - say 15K 
pounds a year new/renewals. I have had a lot of problems installing. Can I 
suggest you try installing from scratch with *no* available data and no MARC 
etc and see what happens if you try to enter existing books, ie not new 
purchases, manually? I found it extremely difficult. "Preferences" seems to be 
case sensitive but accepts words in any case (and sometimes eg "Yes" where "1" 
is the correct answer). So it took me a long time to get to simple biblio. At 
first I tried entering one book in the basket for a publisher. I found it 
impossible to enter the price. If I entered it under list price as 50 and then 
clicked on >> the entry showed the price as 0.00. So I tried again and found I 
had 2 entries for the same book at 0.00. So I deleted one and tried amending 
the other. This time the budget price etc changed to 100 -- and I could not 
persuade it to change. (ie type 50, go to next field and the 1st field is back 
to 100.) Eventually I gave up. I have auto-generate-barcode set. But I can find 
no trace anywhere of what the bar code has been set to (for either copy of the 
same book which is now in the biblio). So I cannnot try circulating it. Surely 
circulation should permit entering the title rather than the barcode (wherever 
it is)? (Since this is for an internal library I want users to be able to 
issue/reissue themselves: this has been discussed over the last few days on 
lis-law at jiscmail.ac.uk, eg:
>I think this comes down to an integrity issue within the organisation
>you are working for. I am hoping to have a new LMS soon and it will give
>me the option of doing exactly what you suggest. An OPAC so that  a fee
>earner can see who an item is located to, this would enable them to
>contact that person ( it could be the person in the next office!). Issue
>and return facilities are also available at their desk tops which would
>enable both parties to reissue the item to the new person.  This as far
>as I can see would save a lot of time and frustration. It does however,
>rely on a high level of trust and goodwill from all the people
>concerned.
 -- no-one is likely to intend to cheat the system.) 
Logging in after adding a few users under the opac caused problems since I had 
not set any passwords: I do not think that I was asked to do so. So I had to 
change the default to no authorisation. If I then searched for a book, eg 
"long", a screen comes up with the two identical entries for a book by Longrigg 
& Higgins, (c) 2003, "item count": 0, "location": blank. If I click on 
"request", which is the only thing I can do, I get koha/opac-reserve.pl?bib=3 
which asks something about "which item types are OK for you?" Neither I nor my 
imaginary user knows what this means - there are none listed - I leave it 
blank, and get the error message "you must select at least one item type". If I 
try various other options (eg check request) I end up with opac-user.pl 
displaying "you have no items on issue". Surely if "item" is essential, there 
should be a default?
Summary: For a first time user with no existing electronic data Koha 2 is 
unusable ...

Roger Horne



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