It’s finally here! After tons of hard work, the Koha community has announced the release of Koha 3.0 RC1. This from the many Koha mailing lists:
You can download from the usual location:
http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-stableRC1.tar.gz
http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-stableRC1.tar.gz.sig
You can check the integrity of the package; either by verifying the provided GPG signature (.sig) or by comparing the MD5 checksum:
5cc0914c5e8250c2491f4dbcf27d4301 [...]

Awesome news from LibraryThing:
We’ve just hit our first major milestone: there are now 50 libraries using LibraryThing for Libraries. See the full list here. For a visual representation of what may be the opposite of LibraryThing for Libraries, but of the same number, look to the right.
We’re also pleased that number 50 is Portland [...]

I love listening to Marshall Breeding present - it always makes me feel better to know that someone can talk faster than me Marshall started his talk by showing us the lib-web-cats advanced search which allows you to search for libraries running specific systems. He did remind us to keep in mind that [...]

Karen Schneider moderated this very interesting two part session on WoePac to WowPac - a look at OPACs as we know them and would like them to be. As a librarian who has often torn her hair out over the sad state - “or should I say sucky state” of our OPACs she’s the perfect [...]

A request for help posted to the Web4Lib List that I think might be of interest to you:
This is an appeal to the readers of Web4Lib to help me collect information regarding automation products used in libraries. I maintain the lib-web-cats database and use it as a tool for analysis of what automation products [...]

After all of my work bug checking and writing the manual for Koha 3, the beta release has finally been announced. I’d love some help testing - so I can’t wait to see what you all have to say!!
Technorati Tags: koha

Elizabeth McKinney de Garcia, Program Director of Georgia PINES talked to us about how PINES decided to develop their own open-source ILS, Evergreen. Georgia PINES is made up of 49 public library systems which equates to 275 facilities and bookmobiles sharing a joint bibliographic database of nearly 9 million books.
About PINES
The PINES library card is [...]

John Stromquist, Executive Director of the WALDO Consortium talked to us about their decision to go with the Koha ILS and LibLime. WALDO is a multi-type library consortium. Of their membership, there are 12 full members (this means they have a shared ils), 11 associate members (this means they share a union catalog), [...]

Tim Spalding has posted a bit of code to get free book covers for your OPAC by using Google. Godmar Back has given a different example for getting multiple covers at once. The Google Book Search API seems to have taken off with libraries & librarians!
Technorati Tags: google books, google book search api, [...]

Next up, LibLime’s Joshua Ferraro. Josh talked to us about why LibLime was started and what both LibLime & Koha could do for libraries.

Originally uploaded by nengard
Why start LibLime?
Josh would often hear librarians saying that they liked the idea of open source, but we have no way to support it. So, Josh started LibLime [...]

Bob Molyneux of Equinox was second to speak at the VALE Symposium the other day.
Bob started by filling us in on the state of the open-source software US public library market which is only about 1%, give or take. He didn’t have the data for academic libraries yet, but he was sure it was [...]

Yesterday I had an interesting chat with my sister about library catalogs. We were talking about the post I made regarding IM & SMS and whether librarians should skip over IM and move on to SMS? I told her about the fact that card catalogs are still being used and she replied with [...]

I’ve been saving a post by Karen Coyle for a while now - wanting to give it a good read. The post was titled The ILS minus the catalog. If you couldn’t tell, I’m spending this morning catching up on blog reading and blog posting
Anyway, back to Karen. This is [...]

In Andrew Nagy’s presentation From Idea to Open Source, he took us through the process of creating VuFind, an open-source OPAC replacement/Library portal.
At Villanova, they wanted to develop a portal for library patrons that would let people search the catalog, the article databases and digital library all in one - and keep it separate from [...]

Are you attending Code4Lib this year? If you are - I encourage you to attend Koha Camp.
Technorati Tags: code4lib, koha

Don’t miss this free opportunity hosted by PALINET:
Koha Camp is a unique first opportunity for systems librarians, library software developers and designers to come together for an open source experience with Koha Library Integrated System.
This one-day workshop, limited to 25 participants, is a place where teams of software developers and librarians will join to explore [...]

I had an interesting chat with a friend regarding cataloging rules and tools that I wanted to share with you all. I know it can sometimes be hard to follow someone else’s chat transcript - but here you go:
Brooke: I think I want to try gluing my catordogging cripple speak to my lack of [...]

What an amazing idea! David Lee King posts about an addition to his library catalog. When patrons can’t find what they’re searching for they’re prompted with a meebo chat box to ask a librarian for help! Check out the picture on Flickr.

From a post by Joseph Lucia at Villanova on the ngc4lib mailing list:
If we look beyond money to personnel, the option looks even better. Let me suggest some numbers. What if, in the U.S., 50 ARL libraries, 20 large public libraries, 20 medium-sized academic libraries, and 20 Oberlin group libraries anted up one [...]

I just had a short chat with a friend about the catalog at her local library. They used to have a terrible system that didn’t seem to work at all and now they’ve put Aquabrowser on top of it:
[09:47] Friend: *sigh*
[09:47] Friend: catalogs are so finicky!
[09:47] Nicole: yep
[09:47] Nicole: what’s the matter now?
[09:47] Friend: [...]

Presented by Ed Corrado of TCNJ - here are the 10 (or so) hacks for the Voyager OPAC (WebVoyage):

New Book List by Michael Doran:

Shelflister by Michael Doran

Spell Checker but not checking against your db - so you can get did you means that aren’t actually in your catalog. (ex at University of Waikato)

Search Voyager [...]

I got to hear an update about the new releases of Voyager at today’s conference. One of my biggest complaints about our current system is that it’s ugly - so very very ugly! Now, I have no experience trying to edit the interface of a Voyager system (that’s not my job anymore), but [...]

Chris Cormack, Vice President, Research & Development at LibLime, is the winner of the New Zealand Open Source Awards for contributions to the Koha Project and Koha itself was a finalist for the best Open Source Project. Check out the awards.
Technorati Tags: koha, ils, new zealand awards, open source

I’ve heard about it and read about it - but I’ve never seen WorldCat Local in action. Apparently, Jennifer Ward presented at the LITA forum and showed the University of Washington’s implementation of WorldCat Local. Read about it here and see the demo here. There’s also a demo of San Mateo County [...]

Marshall Breeding (king of library automation knowledge - at least in my book) is doing a survey on library satisfaction with automation systems. The information was posted 2 months ago - so hurry up and get your answers in:
I am conducting a survey on library automation trends. The survey aims to measure how well [...]