Walter McGinnis gave us a talk based on a paper that he wrote with Joann Ransom on integrating Kete with Koha. I have to admit, I talk a lot about Koha here, but I am a huge fan of Kete as well – and now the two tools can be integrated into each other!!

Walter started by giving us a background of who he is. He does not have a computer sciences degree, instead he’s coming at this from the arts world. Next, what is Kete? It is at its most basic level, “an ongoing communal brain dump.” At its core, Kete has the philosophy that putting something online is only the beginning of it’s lifecycle.

So how does Koha integrate with Kete? There are three ways this can happen.

• Alongside Kete search results (under Other Resources)
• On detail pages for Kete items (under Other Resources)
• On basket homepages (couldn’t figure out where a page like this was for linking)

Basically what you’re seeing are search results you’d find in Koha but integrated into your related Kete pages. For the other way around (Kete into Koha) you can see the Kete results on your Koha search results page.

This feature will make it into Koha 3.4, but if you want it now you can backport it into Koha 3.2 by grabbing the code from the Catalyst public git repository.

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Lee Phillips from the Butte-Silver Bow Public Library was up next to tell us all why she loves Koha. However, instead of talking to us alone, she enlisted the help of her colleagues by sharing their Koha opinions with us in a video she recorded before leaving home for NZ.

First up was Steph who says ‘the nicest thing for us is the adaptability.’ She also gave me a shout out for answering her question in 11 seconds – I have to admit I don’t remember doing it – but I’m so glad I could help her out by writing an inventory report!!

Another librarian brought up my favorite part of Koha – the reports! She loved that she could export them to Excel and create any report under the sun. I love the power afforded by the reporting module (something no other system I’ve ever used offered).

Next up, the children’s librarian loved the fact that you can see the availability of items right from the search results screen. So when kids run to the shelf and don’t see the book they want, she can quickly look it up and show them how to place a hold on the books that are checked out.

One of the tech services librarians said, ‘It took 6 years to start using Spectrum. 46 hours for Koha.’ You gotta love that!! (and Lee obviously did cause she took this moment to jump up and down in the front of the room ) Another librarian shared her point of view and talked about a migration she had gone through 10 years earlier calling it a ‘nightmare.’

My favorite librarian quote from the video was: “The other thing I love about Koha is the open source principles. Libraries are about sharing information – free and open access to information. Most of our proprietary systems are not open and do not share information!”

I hope that the video makes it on to some online venue so I can share it with you all – when it does I’ll put that link here.

[update]Lee has let me put the video up on the ByWater Solutions chanel on Blip.tv[/update]

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First up this morning was Rosalie Blake, the librarian who made it possible for us all to be here in New Zealand celebrating 10 years of Koha!

Rosalie talked to us about how Horowhenua became the “little library that could.” The library bought their first computers in 1988. In 1997 the Horowhenua Library Trust was formed to make decisions about the library funding. They made it clear that while computers were important, they were not the most important thing in the library, more important was making the library a community center with books around the walls. Come 1999, the library was still on their first system and it was no longer as impressive as it once was and Y2K was looming.

While the library was pretty sure their system would survive Y2K, the company would not guarantee that their old system would live through the turn of the millennium. The library was able to convince the trust that they needed the funds to change systems. They started traditionally with ‘Plan A’ which meant sending out an RFP. There was no off the shelf product though that met their objectives. The instead went to ‘Plan B.’

Plan B was a meeting with the developers at Katipo to decide how they wanted the software to work. The librarians sat with developers and tried to explain their needs to developers who knew nothing of how libraries were run. They tested and re-wrote and tested again. All this time, they were thinking of a proper name for their new software. For those who have been in the depths of Koha you may have wondered what all those C4 references were – well, that was the first name for Koha (Cheap and Cheerful Copy of C… {the name of the old system}). In the end the name C4 was dropped and Koha was born – a gift with expectations of reciprocity – this year it was Rosalie’s gift, next year it might be someone else’s turn to give a gift.

So now what? Should they sell the product they had just produced? Neither HLT or Katipo was in the marketing business, plus Katipo was small and that means if they were to go away HLT would be left without support. Katipo recommended they release the software as open source. The promise of a worldwide community for support and development was one of the many reasons that HLT agreed to this route. For Rosalie, the first time someone on the mailing list (who didn’t work for Katipo) answered a technical question, it was a real treat.

Rosalie said of Koha: “E iti noa ana na te aroha” – A small gift given in love.

This is not the end though – with the success of Koha, Horowhenua decided to do it all over again – and scratch their “historical” itch by creating Kete.

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My first post in New Zealand will cover a huge pet peeve of mine and something very important to be aware of before KohaCon starts. Reading my writing on various sites and mailing lists you have probably figured out that a pet peeve of mine is when people refer to Koha as KOHA. Koha is not an acronym, the letters don’t stand for anything fancy, it actually has it roots in New Zealand where Koha was first born. A Koha in New Zealand is special kind of gift. Koha is a Maori word that stands for a gift that comes with expectations. Wikipedia says that a Koha is better defined as a donation in English, but I personally like the ‘gift with exceptions expectations’ definition because it falls in line with the GPL which says you’re welcome to use the software for any purpose, you can even modify the software but the assumption is that you will then share your improvements back with the world.

Rachel Hamilton-Williams gives us even more info in a post to the Koha mailing list:

Starting at the beginning: The word Koha is a Maori word meaning gift or donation – or perhaps more “giving your specialty to the collective event”. Possibly even a sense of quid pro quo. In traditional Maori society (and still) you would bring a koha (Contribution) to an event like a funeral or wedding or big meeting, often food or the specialty of your region. When it’s your turn to hold an event all your guests will bring a Koha, to ease the burden of catering for a lot of people.

Next time you’re send me or anyone in the Koha community an email, or before you start posting about sessions at KohaCon, just remember that Koha is a gift and not an acronym

[update] Fixed typo. [/update]

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The official call for proposals for KohaCon10 has been made. If you’re joining us in NZ in October, please think about sharing your Koha knowledge, tips, and ideas with us! Submit as many proposals as you want.

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Galen Charlton started by reminding us that Koha 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.

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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.

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