Will I finally get to visit NZ? Looks like there is going to be a 10th anniversary KohaCon in NZ - the birthplace of Koha. Keep an eye on this page of the Koha wiki to see how things move along!!
I just have to get them to plan it during one of hubby’s breaks from school - cause I am not traveling across the world without him!! 
The much anticipated Kete 1.2 release is now available.
Kete 1.2 is now available and massively improves on Kete 1.1. As usual, to grab the code see the downloads page for details or browse the code online at http://github.com/kete/kete/.
An in-depth list of features and issues resolved can be found at http://kete.net.nz/documentation/topics/show/260-kete-12-features including guides on their use. Here are some highlights:
- Smarter Extended Fields - Kete now supports richer ways of customizing your content forms and item display. Add a google map for your users to pinpoint location, give them a selection of predefined choices to choose the value from including hierarchical choices, describe the type of relationships between items and your site’s topics.
- Baskets for everyone - site administrators can elect to allow users to create their own baskets for their stuff. They can simplify basket forms to be quick to fill out and prevent users from changing things they shouldn’t.
- Use images to put faces to names - users can designate their uploaded images as portraits of themselves. They can also use their existing gravatar (global avatar) if they like.
- More fun with images and uploaded files - thumbnails of images related for topics in latest topics display, result pages, and RSS feeds to give better illustration of what an item is about. Support for hosting podcasts. Harvesting of embedded metadata from uploaded files such as a geotag of where an image was taken.
- Privacy features refinements - new and refined tools to make it easier to take advantage of Kete’s privacy controls. Great for things like intranets and extranets.
- The beginnings of cross site integration - basket administrators may now display entries from RSS feeds on basket homepages. This is nifty for showing off the latest books in your Koha 3 catalogue, for example.
This site and Kete Horowhenua have been upgraded to use Kete 1.2.
Joann Ransom writes to the Koha mailing list:
Kete 1.2 contains the first functionality to allow the beginnings of integration with Koha 3 (along with other ILS that provide RSS feeds for their catalogs) and 1.3 and 1.4 will contain more extensive ways tie to tie-in to a libraries other online resources like Koha
I’m a big Kete fan and would love to see more US Libraries using it in their communities. It ties in nicely with my genealogy passion
I wrote about the first five in this series last week - now for the most recent update to the Unsung Heroes of Koha series from Chris Cormack:
Nicole Burchfield, aka Librarian, Interrupted asks why libraries are spending so much on licenses for software from Microsoft:
Why do libraries spend thousands of dollars a year on Microsoft Windows licenses for pc’s that are only used for access to the internet?
….
These computers often do absolutely nothing except provide access to the internet. So why not use Linux? And while we’re at it throw some open source software on there like Gimp and Open Office? All free, all useful to patrons - how can this not be the right thing to do?
I commented noting Howard County Library which is going completely open source - but there are several other libraries out there doing this very thing. I teach classes all over the country on open source and I always tell librarians that making the switch on their public PCs (if not all PCs) to Linux and all open source software is a great option. They get more security for less cost and they get to say that they support open source! What more could you want?
What’s your full name (middle name too)?
Mark Bucholtz
What’s your job title?
Data Migration Specialist
What’s your favorite color?
Turquoise
What’s your favorite food or meal?
French vanilla ice cream with chocolate fudge sauce
What’s your favorite word (keep it clean)?
Ocho … It’s Spanish for eight
Are you a dog or a cat person?
Dog
Do you have any pets?
2 dogs and 4 birds
Why did you want to work with LibLime?
- Chance to work for a small, growing, privately owned company.
- Like the idea of open source software.
- Chance to write my own data load utilities
What did you know about open source before taking on this job? What have you learned since taking the job?
I knew what is was in general and I had heard of Koha and LibLime but I did not know much about either. I think the most interesting thing I have learned is how the new development gets sponsored by the libraries.
What’s at the top of your wishlist for the next version of Koha?
- Some data structure enhancements for fines and holds to make it more sophisticated.
- Remove the item data from biblioitems
If you had all of the skills, time and money, what open source application would you like to develop?
A site to share information, examples of initiatives to live locally on a personal, community, corporate, government level.
What are your top three favorite websites?
The only web site I regularly visit is Treehugger
What would you do if you won the lottery?
- Do more charity work and give more money to charities
- Give the company some money to sponsor some development
- Build an energy efficient house with a good yard to grow a lot of my own food
- Give some money to my family
Are you an organized desk person or a messy desk person?
I’m fairly organized but my desk is small so it looks messy.
As many of your know, I’m traveling a lot lately - well that’s because I’m out there teaching librarians about open source. Here are my upcoming open source talks:
Hopefully I’ll see you at one or more of these talks.
David Schuster has announced a meeting of KUDOS (Koha Users and Developers of Open Source) at the annual meeting of the American Library Association in Chicago.
Date: Sunday, 7/12/2009
Time: 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Location: Hyatt Regency Chicago (not the Hyatt that’s close to the
convention center)
Room: Grand Suite 3
As some of you know I’m a fan of Yahoo! Pipes and wrote a chapter about using Pipes with Koha for my upcoming Library Mashups book. Well, today I got 2 emails from Darrell Ulm at Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library telling me that he wrote 2 Pipes for his Koha installation.
The first one lets you search a Koha catalog (Stow-Monroe Falls in the example) and create a feed or badge for that.
The second is much cooler (in my opinion) and can be seen in action on the Stow-Munroe catalog homepage. It shows the upcoming titles as a series of book jackets or jackets and title info.
If you’re doing something neat with Koha RSS feeds - or anything neat with Koha, let me know and I’ll gladly share it with everyone
Chris Cormack has been writing a series of posts about the unsung heroes of Koha. The first five parts were written last week are an well worth a read if you want to learn more about the history of Koha and those involved.
I am reading an awesome book right now - Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe. I has read through bits of the book a few months back while waiting for my hubby to pick up a new RPG and liked what I saw.
Howe talks about the movement we’re seeing on the web these days - the movement from a few experts working in their field to thousands of amateurs working in many fields. The book itself is well worth reading cover to cover, but the part that I’m clinging to is the correlation between crowdsourcing and open source.
Crowdsourcing has it genesis in the open source movement in software. The development of the Linux operating system proved that a community of like-minded peers was capable of creating a better product than a corporate behemoth like Microsoft. Open source revealed a fundamental truth about humans that had gone largely unnoticed until the connectivity of the Internet brought it into high relief: labor can often be organized more efficiently in the context of a community than it can in the context of the corporation. The best person to do a job is the one who most wants to do that job; and the best people to evaluate heir performance are their friends and peers who, by the way, will enthusiastically pitch in to improve the final product, simply for the sheer pleasure of helping one another and creating something beautiful from which they all will benefit. (p.8)
There are many great passages like this throughout the book and that’s why I’m recommending it to those who attend my open source classes as a way to learn about open source without having to read the techie books (which are also great - but sometimes hard for librarians to wrap their heads around) like The Cathedral and the Bazaar. In addition to learning about the community and philosophy behind open source, readers will learn to understand the way people are interacting with information on the web - and the fact that librarians aren’t the only experts out there - we need to start tapping into the knowledge and skills that are locked up in our patrons.