Chris Catalfo has a post over at Thingology about the integration of Library Thing for Libraries in Koha 3.2.

The 3.2 version of Koha (which isn’t out yet) will include the improved integration for LTFL. If you are using Koha without a host, and run on the bleeding edge, you can try it now via Git.

What this does is enable and disable LTFL through the Koha Enhanced Content system preference page. Simply enter your LTFL account number (found on your LibraryThing for Libraries Account page), decide where you’d like LTFL content to display (in tabs or under other bibliographic details) and enable it. No need to edit Koha templates.

I have gotten to see it in action in my test system and it’s awesome!!!

Technorati Tags: koha, librarything

Danny has a post on his blog that I feel needs to be repeated here - and all over the web. A the Koha conference and Koha Dev weekend, we heard that ther are still some positions open in the Koha community and they are very important positions.

Quality Assurance manager(s), to review all patches that are sent in to uphold a particular level of quality among the Koha code base. It was suggested that perhaps this be a funded position through an organization or the KUDOS user group since it would take a significant amount of time. It was also suggested that if a QA manager can not be found that developers do more peer review and sign-off on each others patches.

Bug wrangler(s), to review the bugs at http://bugs.koha.org and make sure that old bugs are closed and all bugs are valid. The number of open bugs listed at the Koha bugzilla site is currently 827.

Funding or development of core code re-factoring, to clean existing Koha structure, make the entire development process more efficient, and increase code speed and readability. It is hard to find a specific library to want to sponsor an enhancement that would be something that only takes place behind the scenes, so it was suggested that this may fall to a group like the KUDOS user group.

There are several roles that people play in supporting open source, my role (aside from being an open source evangelist) is the Koha Documentation Manager - a role that I learned I’m stuck in until I fall down hehe. If you like the ideas behind open source or want to make a switch in your library the best way to start is to join in and help the community out!

At KohaCon I talked about writing MySQL reports for Koha and my slides are available on the conference wiki - but I wanted to post them here as well. So check out my slides if you want to learn more.

Technorati Tags: kohacon09

Galen started by reminding us that 3.2 in an ambitious release. There will be a new acquisitions module (which I saw a demo of yesterday - and it made me very very happy!!), new holdings support, many circulation improvements (a lot to do with holds) and improved stability.

Remember to check the RFCs on the wiki to keep up with new developments. RFCs are Requests for Comments - we use them as a way to get feedback on new developments. Some RFCs are “wouldn’t it be nice” type requests, so keep in mind that not all RFCs will be implemented for 3.2 - so will be deferred and some will not happen at all. An RFC does not mean there is a commitment to do anything with it.

Galen went on to talk to us about the big features (his own personal list):

• New Acquisitions Module (review and testing period)
• Holdings Structure
  • Introduces “summary” records into Koha (which will be optional)

  • support the MARC format of holdings display
• Circulation Features
  • Proxy patrons

  • Fines thresholds (or fine forgiveness)
    • a way to define different fine types and forgive fines with the running of a simple job
  • Callslips
    • similar to Koha’s current request (or hold) system, but makes it easier for when you have pull things off the shelf
  • Recalls
    • if someone has something on loan it’s a way for the patron to be notified that they have to return a book right now
  • Hourly loans
    • to handle reserve desks on campus where you can only check out an item for hours instead of days
  • Email checkout slips (a feature I have already documented and see in action in my own system)
  • Calculate fines in days debarred
    • if your item is overdue by 1 day you will be prevented from checking out for 2 days (instead of charging money as fines) - which is very common in France and developed by BibLibre
  • Place hold on multiple items at once (also already available and documented)
  • Additional hold request improvements
  • Course Reserves - Integration with ReservesDirect
• OPAC Enhancements
  • Syndetics support (done)

  • LibraryThing (coming)
  • Babelthèque (done)
  • Ability to tag multiple items (done)
• Cataloging
  • ‡biblios integration

  • Improved browse indexes
  • ISBN13 normalization
  • Item bulk status change (BibLibre has one development on this and LibLime has global change enhancements in the works as well)
  • Brief records
    • ability to add records at point of check in (ILL or paperbacks)
  • Record maintenance
    • attach workflow status to bib records
  • Deleted records
    • gives the ability to delete records but still be able to search for them in specific context
• Serials
  • General improvements to the display and prediction pattern

  • More control over display of recently checked in issues
• Administration
  • Improved system preferences editor (Thanks Jesse Weaver!!!)
• Reporting
  • Guided reports parameter system will allow you save your report so you don’t need to do one for every month - should save lots of time
• Misc
  • Granular permissions (new acq module already implements some of these)
    • Galen says: “I regret to inform you that the superlibrarian permission still doesn’t come with a cape”
  • IE compatibility improvements
  • Improvements to overdues report
  • Improved OAI-PMH server (the open data protocol for metadata harvesting)
  • URL checker

Of course we all wonder about the the timeline will be for the release of 3.2. The target is for late summer, early fall, but 3.1 should be out in early summer for testing and such of these features!!

In addition to these planned developments, there will be at least one cool development that comes out of Developer Weekend here at KohaCon - and Galen will lock the doors until it happens Librarians are welcome to join in with the developers’ conference so that they get input from us while hacking away.

Technorati Tags: kohacon09

Chris Cormack with input from Paul Poulain started the conference off with a history of Koha.

Chris started working on Koha 3077 days ago (he thinks).

Koha was started at the Horowhenua Library Trust by Katipo

• need a new ILS (because of a y2k bug)
• no suitable response to their RFP (none of the vendors actually read it - because none of their solutions would actually work)
• it’s just a database, how hard can it be? (hehe) — this is what they thought!!

Neither HLT or Katipo wanted to be vendors so they decided to release it under the GPL - didn’t want to write the project and then try to sell it (they were developers and weren’t sales people and HLT was a library not a sales team). They also looked at it as if you give something out you’ll get something back.

We didn’t understand how libraries worked so they did rapid prototypes where they would show the librarians what they had and ask if that was how they wanted it to work and then the librarians said yes or no and they moved on once they got right. We only had one day off in the year - Christmas day - because of their deadline - in the end they found that it was just a database - “but a database with INSANE rules” and exceptions to those rules.

January 5, 2000 Koha went live and announced to the world on July 2000 (article in Library Life in NZ). In that time they did a lot of cleaning of the code to make it tidy so that other people could install it. Soon after the release HLT won some awards and the software started selling itself - just like they wanted. When 1.0 was released in July 2000 it only took 20 minutes before someone first downloaded the system.

By 2002 things really got moving. Paul Poulain joined up and started working on Koha for a friend because his company went bankrupt, he wasn’t planning on starting a business around it, but in the end this led to BibLibre. Also in 2002, Nelsonville Public Library in OH started looking at Koha. 2002 also brought the next major release version 1.2.0 (which included Paul’s first major contribution which was the ability to edit the system preferences in the browser instead of directly in the database.

As the community grew, they needed to organize the community by adding roles. Kaitiaki is the guardian, Release Manager, Release Maintainer, and Documentation Manager. Chris told us that: “I like writing code, but even more, I like the community that has grown up around Koha”

By 2005 the pay for support options spread to the US with LibLime. This is also when Henri Damien Laurent and Paul formed a partnership to work on Koha together.

In 2008 we saw the release of Koha 3.0 and the best manual ever written (okay - Chris didn’t say that - but come on - you all agree don’t you?? ). 2008 and probably 2009 seems like the year of India for Koha. There is a large growth spurt going on right now with Indian librarians switching to Koha.

2009 saw the release of K’s Helping Hand, KohaCon 2009 and (this is almost finished) the release of Koha integrated with SOPAC - two awesome open source projects integrated into one!!

You can find the entire history online at: http://git.koha.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=Koha;a=blob_plain;f=docs/history.txt and Chris will finish it soon and then put it in git so that we can all add to it - in particular libraries adding themselves when they go live so we can start keeping track of that more efficiently.

Technorati Tags: kohacon09

Awesome news from Biblibre (quote from email sent to Koha developers):

I’m very pleased to announce that BibLibre has started working on a SOPAC connector for Koha.

SOPAC is a module of drupal, written to have a perfectly integrated web2.0 catalogue over the CMS drupal. You can find information here : http://www.thesocialopac.net/

It’s a new Biblibrian that works on that : jean-andré Santoni. He’s still a student, working on this subject for 2 months. Hopefully, once he has finished his school, he will be hired by BibLibre.

He will implement many new webservices, that will follow the DLF Discovery Interface scheme (http://diglib.org/architectures/ilsdi/)

He started last week, and the 1st days are very encouraging. We will let you know once it can be opened.

As usual, it will be GPL-ed, even if we still haven’t decided how to distribute the code (use koha, sopac or BibLibre tools & repositories ?)

happy day.
–
Paul POULAIN
http://www.biblibre.com
Expert en Logiciels Libres pour l’info-doc

I love seeing open source products brought together to work in conjunction I can’t wait to see what these developments reveal!

Technorati Tags: koha, drupal, sopac

It has been a bit over a year since I have joined LibLime and I have learned a lot in that time. One of the things I’ve learned is just how different libraries around the world are! As an active member on the Koha mailing list, I see lots of questions that I sometimes just don’t understand. Questions about the handling of items or collection or vendor codes - things that I know how to use in a US academic (where I have my experience) or public (where I do a lot of training) library - but have never used outside of the country.

This is why Joann Ransom’s recent questions to the list about terminology and codes in Koha was so interesting for me to read and respond to. After going through my responses, Joann wanted to share her findings with everyone (another awesome part of open source - sharing) on her blog.

There are two very different ways to organize a collection in Koha 3.0. Either heavy use of the Item Types OR heavy use of CCodes. My understanding is that you have to choose 1 or the other for advanced search, but not both.

Item types – These are used to set circulation policies. These are not format descriptors (GMDs). They can be set as advanced search options, and display as icons on the search results screen. The codes are never seen by the public, but informative descriptions add real value as a finding tool for patrons.

CCodes – Collection Codes can be set as advanced search options too, and can be set to display as text on search results.

For those who are new to Koha or are switching from an older version, Joann’s post might be a helpful read before getting started with setting up your collections and items

Everyone who knows Koha knows Owen and his amazing design work on Koha. Now we can all learn from his experiences by keeping up with his new Koha Blog. The first two posts help you update the header on Koha! I can’t wait to see what else he’s going to teach us.

The amazing staff at NEKLS have done it again! They have already contributed to the Koha community with their amazing NExpress website, but now they have added training videos into the mix!! Make sure you check out their videos and their other training materials and subscribe to their site!

The most recent stable version of Koha has been released. Version 3.0.1 includes lots of bug fixes and new features. I have been keeping the manual up to date as these patches have been included in the new version, so you can find updated documentation to go along with this release online.

Learn more.