Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 3, Issue 5: May 2012

Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
Please submit news items to

Table of Contents

• Koha Development
  • Koha 3.8.1 Released
  • Koha 3.6.5 Release Imminent
  • Koha Statistics
  • Database Schema Documentation Updated
• Koha Community
  • New Koha Libraries
  • Community Gossip
• Past Koha Events
  • May General IRC Meeting
  • New Zealand Koha User Group Day 2012
• Upcoming Koha Events
  • June General IRC Meeting
  • KohaCon12
  • KohaCon13

Koha Development

Koha 3.8.1 Released
by Chris Cormack

The Koha release team is happy to announce the release of Koha 3.8.1. This is a stable release and contains bugfixes as well as updated translations.

Koha 3.8.1 can be downloaded here. Release notes are here.

Installation instructions can be found here or in the INSTALL files that come in the tarball.

Koha 3.6.5 Release Imminent

As we go to press on 24 May 2012, Koha 3.6.5 is scheduled to be released today.

Koha Statistics

Chris Cormack, statistician par excellence, has posted bug statistics for April and statistics for Koha 3.8.1.

Database Schema Documentation Updated

Koha’s database schema documentation has been updated.

Koha Community

New Koha Libraries

• Gerard Cottet Library at Salus University (via ByWater Solutions)
• Lane Library at Ripon College (via ByWater Solutions)
• North Central Regional Library (via ByWater Solutions)

Community Gossip

Lenora Oftedahl reports: “The StreamNet Library successfully upgraded from 3.0 to 3.6. In addition to our upgrade, we also successfully installed the Koha software on the same server as our WordPress CMS. The two programs are peacefully co-existing through the creative use of subdomains. You can visit our website at our new domain, http://www.streamnetlibrary.org. If other users would like assistance or have suggestions, please feel free to contact Lenora at oftl@critfc.org.

Lee Miller of the Butte-Silver Bow Public Library in Montana reports that her library is co-hosting KohaCon12 and that she’ll be presenting at the conference on the use of open source software in Montana libraries and the use of new applications and discovery tools.

Equinox Software is looking to hire a support specialist to provide technical support for Koha and Evergreen.

Shire of Derby West Kimberley has become the first local government area in Australia to choose Koha to support the delivery of its public library services. More information is here.

Past Koha Events

May General IRC Meeting

The May general IRC meeting was held on 2 May 2012.

More info, including the agenda and links to the minutes, is here.

New Zealand Koha User Group Day 2012

Current and prospective Koha users got together at the New Zealand Treasury on 15 May 2012 for the second New Zealand Koha users group meeting. Chris Cormack reported on the meeting here.

Upcoming Koha Events

June General IRC Meeting

The June general IRC meeting will be held on Wednesday, 13 June 2012.

More info is here.

KohaCon12

KohaCon12 is nearly upon us! It will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 5-7 June 2012. A hackfest will be held 9-11 June 2012.

This is a free conference for everyone interested in the Koha library system. There is no registration fee, but attendees are asked to pre-register.

The conference schedule has been posted here.

The organizers continue to seek sponsors to help defray the cost of the conference. Sponsors so far include Tamil, PTFS Europe, Catalyst, Libriotech, Projektlink Konsult, The Galecia Group, C & P Bibliography Services, CALYX Information Essentials, and KohaAloha. Information on sponsorship is here.

More details on the conference can be found here.

KohaCon13

Bidding is now open for hosting of KohaCon13. Proposals can be viewed and added on this page of the Koha community wiki.

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 3, Issue 4: April 2012

Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
Please submit news items to

Table of Contents

• Koha Development
  • Koha 3.8.0 Released
  • Koha 3.10 Roles
  • Koha Statistics
  • Browse Headings Using Solr
  • SemantiKoha
• Koha Community
  • New Koha Libraries
  • Community Gossip
  • Pacific Islands Koha Users Call
• Past Koha Events
  • April General IRC Meeting
• Upcoming Koha Events
  • May General IRC Meeting
  • Symposium Koha 2012
  • Koha and Dspace Training in India
  • KohaCon12

Koha Development

Koha 3.8.0 Released
by Chris Cormack

The Koha release team is happy to announce the release of Koha 3.8.0, the third major release since we shifted to time based releases. The release team would like to thank everyone involved in this release for making it possible.

Koha 3.8.0 contains over 130 enhancements with over 1000 changesets from 71 developers. Please read the release notes for more information.

Koha 3.8.0 can be downloaded here.

Installation instructions can be found here or in the INSTALL files that come in the tarball.

Koha 3.10 Roles
by Chris Cormack

Positions for the Koha 3.10.0 release cycle (due October 2012) were confirmed at the April general IRC meeting. It is our biggest release team yet and a really good sign of the health of the community that we had so many volunteers. The roles are:

• Release Manager : Paul Poulain, France
• Translation Manager: Shared between Samuel Desseaux and Frédéric Demians both from France
• Translation Assistants: Katrin Fischer, Germany; Marijana Glavica, Croatia
• Documentation Manager: Nicole Engard, USA
• DB Documentation Manager: Nicole Engard, USA
• Quality Assurance (QA) Manager: Ian Walls, USA
• Quality Assurance (QA) Assistants: Marcel de Rooy, Netherlands; Jonathan Druart, France; Mason James, New Zealand
• Release Maintainer 3.8.x: Chris Cormack, New Zealand
• Release Maintainer 3.6.x: Jared Camins-Esakov, USA
• Packaging Manager: Robin Sheat, New Zealand
• Packaging Assistant: Mason James, New Zealand
• Bug Wrangler: Magnus Enger, Norway; Katrin Fischer, Germany; Dobrica Pavlinušić, Croatia; Koustubha Kale, India
• Meeting Chair: BWS Johnson, USA

So that’s 17 people in total who have volunteered and been accepted to positions for the next 6 months (starting after the release of 3.8.0 on April 23). I think it is also great we have a nice geographic spread, especially the bug wrangler team.

Koha Statistics

Chris Cormack, statistician par excellence, has posted bug statistics for March and statistics for Koha 3.8.0.

Adding Browse Headings to Koha Using Solr
by Stefano Bargioni

The Library of the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce in Rome added browse headings to Koha. This is perhaps the first example of integration of Koha and Solr in a production environment. Users can scan lists of authors (established or unestablished forms), titles, title series, author/title, uniform titles, subjects, etc.

An engine written in Perl runs on a regular basis to synchronize Solr entries with Koha data. The process is driven by an xml config file where chosen tags and subfields of authority or bibliographic records are described in order to feed one or more lists for browsing. More than 500,000 entries were generated, starting from about 111,000 authority records and 147,000 biblio records.

Browse search was added at the top of “Browse by Subject” page; see http://catalogo.pusc.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-authorities-home.pl.

This topic will be presented exhaustively at KohaCon12 in Edinburgh.

SemantiKoha
by Magnus Enger

Recently, there has been a fair amount of discussion about RDF/Semantic Web technologies being central to the efforts to replace the MARC family of “standards”, including from the US Library of Congress [1]. However, there has not been much testing of these technologies in the context of actual ILSes. I aim to do something about that with my “SemantiKoha” project. The goal is to explore how openly available semantic/linked data can be used in the Koha OPAC to enhance the user experience and aid in discovery. The practical work is at a very early proof-of-concept stage, but there is a live demo available [2] and the source code is also available [3]. If anyone wants to join the fun and contribute please don’t hesitate to contact me!

[1] http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/framework-051311.html and http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/framework-103111.html.

[2] http://semantikoha.libriotech.no/. See, for example, the page for Charles Darwin: http://semantikoha.libriotech.no/cgi-bin/koha/opac-view.pl?uri=http://data.deichman.no/person/darwin_charles.

[3] https://github.com/MagnusEnger/semantikoha. See especially the README, which explains how the demo is set up: https://github.com/MagnusEnger/semantikoha/blob/master/README.txt.

Koha Community

New Koha Libraries

• Middletown Township Public Library (via ByWater Solutions)
• Wilderness Coast Public Libraries (via ByWater Solutions)

Community Gossip

Owen Leonard has revisited the process of customizing OPAC cart and lists buttons, this time using CSS3 features.

Adalid Ortiz reports that Biblioteca Loyola of the Universidad Iberoamericana Tijuana in Mexico has published an online manual in Spanish for their Koha OPAC. They previously published an online manual in Spanish on cataloging with Koha.

Matt Adams has posted an update on LibLime’s application for the New Zealand Koha trademark.

Pacific Islands Koha Users Call
by Pam Bidwell, University of the South Pacific

I would like to hear from users of Koha in the Pacific Islands.

Many small Pacific countries struggle with extra issues when automating their libraries, such as unexpected power outages (and damaging power surges), intermittent and slow Internet access, old technology and limited IT expertise. For many Pacific libraries, Koha is their first automated system, and staff training is a real issue. Quite a few Pacific Koha projects have stalled as a result of these problems.

We need to develop a supportive local community that shares knowledge and offers support.

I hope to set up a smaller discussion forum for the Pacific Koha community (while still being involved in the wider Koha community discussions). The forum will talk about day to day use of Koha, answer basic questions about using the system and share resources such as training materials. I would also like to discuss regional training possibilities.

Please email me at pamela.bidwell(at)usp.ac.fj if you would like to be involved.

Past Koha Events

April General IRC Meeting

The April general IRC meeting was held on 4 April 2012.

More info, including the agenda and links to the minutes, is here.

Upcoming Koha Events

May General IRC Meeting

The May general IRC meeting will be held on Wednesday, 2 May 2012.

More info is here.

Symposium Koha 2012

Symposium Koha 2012 will be held at BULAC in Paris 14-15 May 2012. The symposium will be a forum for exchange and meetings between Koha users, future users, and providers. More info is here.

Koha and Dspace Training in India

Two-day Koha training and certification workshops are being offered in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi. More info is here.

Three-day Koha and Dspace training and certification workshops are being offered in Mumbai and Bangalore. More info is here.

KohaCon12

KohaCon12 will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 5-7 June 2012. A hackfest will be held 9-11 June.

This is a free conference for everyone interested in the Koha library system. There is no registration fee, but attendees are asked to pre-register.

The organizers are seeking sponsors to help defray the cost of the conference. Sponsors so far include Tamil, PTFS Europe, Catalyst, Libriotech, Projektlink Konsult, and The Galecia Group. Information on sponsorship is here.

More details on the conference can be found here.

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 3, Issue 3: March 2012

Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
Please submit news items to

Table of Contents

• Koha Development
  • Koha 3.6.4 Released
  • Koha 3.8 Status
  • Koha 3.10 Roles
  • Release Manager’s Newsletter
  • Koha Statistics
• Koha Community
  • New Koha Libraries
  • Community Gossip
  • New Zealand Meeting Call
  • Meeting Logs
• Past Koha Events
  • Marseille Hackfest
  • March General IRC Meeting
  • Global Bug Squashing Week
• Upcoming Koha Events
  • April General IRC Meeting
  • KohaCon12

Koha Development

Koha 3.6.4 Released
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.6.4.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.04.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.04.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.04.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.04.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.6.4 are at http://koha-community.org/koha-3-6-4.

Koha 3.8 Status

Koha 3.8.0 is scheduled to be released on 23 April 2012.

As of 26 March, 3.8 is in a feature freeze.

Paul Poulain, Koha 3.8 Release Manager, has posted a roadmap to 3.8.

Koha 3.10 Roles
by MJ Ray

With the release of Koha 3.8.0 scheduled for 23 April 2012, it’s time to start thinking about roles for the 3.10 series.

We would like volunteers for:

• Release Manager
• Translation Manager
• Documentation Manager
• Database Documentation Manager
• Quality Assurance (QA) Manager
• Assistant QA Managers
• Specific Module maintainers
• Release Maintainers
• Packaging Manager (and grasshopper)
• Bug Wranglers (the more the merrier!)
• Meeting chair

Anyone who wants take on any of these roles is more than welcome to write their name next to one on the Roles for 3.10 wiki page and perhaps link to their proposal.

The community will vote on these during the April General IRC meeting, 4 April 2012 at 10:00 UTC +0000, straight after the release news.

Please, consider stepping forwards to help lead Koha’s development.

Release Manager’s Newsletter

Paul Poulain, Koha 3.8 Release Manager, is publishing a monthly newsletter dedicated to Koha 3.8 development. It can be found on the Koha Community website in the Koha News category. The fourth issue is here.

Koha Statistics

Chris Cormack, statistician par excellence, has posted some recent stats on Koha:

February bug/enhancement statistics
Statistics for Koha 3.6.4

Koha Community

New Koha Libraries

• Columbia County Rural Library District (via ByWater Solutions)
• Kalamaria Public Library (Thessaloniki, Greece) (via Union Catalog of Academic Libraries)
• Plum Creek Library System (via ByWater Solutions)
• Southern NH Library Cooperative (via ByWater Solutions)
• Walla Walla Public Library (via ByWater Solutions)
• Washoe County Library System (via ByWater Solutions)
• Wilderness Coast Public Libraries (via ByWater Solutions)

Community Gossip

Marc Balmer reports that he has integrated the proprietary arcapos point of sale system with Koha using the SIP protocol. This combination enables the sale of items in the library with seamless integration of fee processing and payment. More info is here.

Stefano Bargioni has developed a Perl script to generate authority records from bibliographic records, which would be useful for migrating data to Koha from an ILS that lacks authority records. You can download the script and get more info here. Stefano would appreciate help with replacing XML::Simple with YAML::Sick and with preparing config files for non-MARC21.

Mysore University Library has implemented a mobile version of their Koha opac.

Kristina D.C. Hoeppner posted to her blog an account of her introduction to squashing bugs during Global Bug Squashing Week.

Vimal Kumar V. has posted a survey to measure adoption and user perceptions of potential Koha users in India.

Chris Cormack tweeted that by upgrading to Koha version 3.6.4, Horowhenua Library Trust, the New Zealand library that sponsored the original development of Koha, is now running a version of Koha containing a contribution by the 14-year-old son of the Trust’s Head of Libraries, Joann Ransom. Chris added that when the original Koha first went live, it also contained a contribution by the son of the Head of Libraries at that time.

Chris has also posted info on using Koha with citation managers Zotero, Endnote, and RefWorks.

New Zealand Meeting Call
by Hannah Benbow

We’re keen for another Koha users group meeting here in New Zealand. If you’d be interested in coming along, let me know so we can get an idea of interest. Contact me on: +64 4 917 6103 or email Hannah.benbow@treasury.govt.nz.

I’ve heard really great things about the last meeting hosted by the Horowhenua Library Trust and would be keen for something similar—an opportunity for users to talk about how to get the best out of Koha and to share their knowledge and ideas.

If there’s enough interest for this to proceed, the Central Agencies Shared Services Information Management team would be happy to host it here at Treasury.

Meeting Logs
by Galen Charlton

Minutes and logs of community meetings that are recorded by MeetBot can now be found at http://meetings.koha-community.org/. I’ve updated all links to meeting minutes on the wiki and instituted a redirect from the previous URL base. I ask any webmasters who link to meeting logs to update their links accordingly.

Past Koha Events

Marseille Hackfest

Paul Poulain has posted an extensive report on the Hackfest that took place in Marseille from 19-25 March.

Gaëtan Boisson posted an earlier report.

March General IRC Meeting

The March general IRC meeting was held on 21 March 2012.

More info, including the agenda and links to the minutes, is here.

Global Bug Squashing Week 2012-03-19
by Magnus Enger

Global bug squashing days are days designated to a concerted effort to get bugs and patches moving along in the right direction. A global bug squashing week is 5 global bug squashing days in a row.

The week of 19-23 March 2012 was a global bug squashing week, coinciding with the Marseille Hackfest. More info is here.

Upcoming Koha Events

April General IRC Meeting

The April general IRC meeting will be held on Wednesday, 4 April 2012.

More info is here.

KohaCon12

KohaCon12 will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 5-7 June 2012. A hackfest will be held 9-11 June.

This is a free conference for everyone interested in the Koha library system, which is Free and Open Source Software. There is no registration fee, but we will ask that attendees pre-register. Further calls, including calls for papers and registrations will be posted soon.

Details (travel, hotels, agenda draft, etc) can be found linked from here.

KohaCon12 is the fifth KohaCon, following last year’s successful conference in India which brought together users and developers worldwide. KohaCon12 will feature an international slate of speakers (both Koha users and active Koha contributors) conducting presentations and workshops on a diverse range of topics. Talks will cover a range of topics from general experiences of Koha through to technical information on the various modules.

“We expect this event to have wide appeal,” said MJ Ray of host organisation and Koha support provider software.coop. “The conference is for both techies and non-techies. In addition to presentations on the technical side of Koha, the conference will be a demonstration of how users and developers around the world cooperate to improve Free and Open Source Software. software.coop is delighted to host KohaCon in Edinburgh in our tenth anniversary year and this UN International Year of Co-operatives.”

“Koha conferences are always an informative and uplifting event, I have no doubt that this years conference in Edinburgh will be the best conference yet.” said Chris Cormack, one of the original authors of the Koha version 1.0.

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 3, Issue 2: February 2012

Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
Please submit news items to

Table of Contents

• Koha Development
  • Koha 3.6.4 Status
  • Koha 3.6.3 Released
  • Koha 3.4.8 Released
  • Koha Release Statistics
  • Release Manager’s Newsletter
• Koha Community
  • New Koha Libraries
  • Community Gossip
• Past Koha Events
  • February General IRC Meeting
  • Global Bug Squashing Day 2012-02-08
• Upcoming Koha Events
  • Marseille Hackfest
  • March General IRC Meeting
  • KohaCon12

Koha Development

Koha 3.6.4 Status
by Chris Nighswonger

The 3.6.x branch is in a string freeze. Koha 3.6.4 is scheduled for release on 1 March 2012.

Koha 3.6.3 Released
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.6.3.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.03.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.03.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.03.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.03.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.6.3 are at http://koha-community.org/koha-3-6-3.

Koha 3.4.8 Released
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.4.8.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.08.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.08.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.08.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.08.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.4.8 are at http://koha-community.org/koha-3-4-8.

Koha Release Statistics

Chris Cormack, statistician par excellence, has posted some stats on recent Koha releases:

Statistics for Koha 3.6.3
Statistics for Koha 3.4.8

He also posted signoff statistics for January 2012.

Release Manager’s Newsletter

Paul Poulain, Koha 3.8 Release Manager, is publishing a monthly newsletter dedicated to Koha 3.8 development. It can be found on the Koha Community website in the Koha News category.

The first two issues were distributed via the koha-devel mailing list. The third issue is here.

Koha Community

New Koha Libraries

• Huntington Public Library (via ByWater Solutions)
• Kimball Public Library (via ByWater Solutions)
• Montgomery House Warrior Run Area Public Library (self-hosted)
• Plaistow Public Library (via ByWater Solutions)
• Sandown Public Library (via ByWater Solutions)

Community Gossip

Equinox Software is seeking a Library Data Specialist to work with library data and configure Koha and Evergreen systems.

Kyle Hall has joined ByWater Solutions as Development Support Specialist.

Nicole Engard has created a number of useful video tutorials on using Koha.

Check out the map of Koha sites.

Past Koha Events

February General IRC Meeting

The February general IRC meeting was held on 8 February 2012.

For more info, including the agenda and links to the minutes, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_8_February_2012.

Global Bug Squashing Day 2012-02-08
by Magnus Enger

A Global bug squashing day was held on Wednesday, 8 February 2012, and there was much rejoicing.

For the numbers, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2012-02-08_Global_bug_squashing_day.

Upcoming Koha Events

Marseille Hackfest
by Paul Poulain

25 Koha developers will be gathering to work on improving Koha from 19-25 March in Marseille, France.

There will be people from Croatia (2), Switzerland (1), Italy (1), Germany (1), USA (1), and France (19).

Six of us are librarians; the rest are IT/developers.

We plan to focus on these topics:

• a small group working on performance and persistence issues, trying to make Koha Plack/mod_perl compatible
• a small group working on database issues, trying to remove MySQL dependencies and incorporate business/database separation logic into Koha
• a small group working on user interface issues, trying to improve HTML, CSS, etc.
• a small group working on Solr integration (that will, hopefully, be submitted for October 2012 release)
• the rest of us working on what we could call a Global Bug Squashing Week–testing patches, etc.

We still have space, so if you’d like to come, just email me.

March General IRC Meeting

The March general IRC meeting will be held on Wednesday, 21 March 2012.

For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_21_March_2012.

KohaCon12

KohaCon12 will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 5-7 June 2012. A hackfest will be held 9-11 June.

This is a free conference for everyone interested in the Koha library system, which is Free and Open Source Software. There is no registration fee, but we will ask that attendees pre-register. Further calls, including calls for papers and registrations will be posted soon.

Details (travel, hotels, agenda draft, etc) can be found linked from http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/KohaCon12_Summary.

KohaCon12 is the fifth KohaCon, following last year’s successful conference in India which brought together users and developers worldwide. KohaCon12 will feature an international slate of speakers (both Koha users and active Koha contributors) conducting presentations and workshops on a diverse range of topics. Talks will cover a range of topics from general experiences of Koha through to technical information on the various modules.

“We expect this event to have wide appeal,” said MJ Ray of host organisation and Koha support provider software.coop. “The conference is for both techies and non-techies. In addition to presentations on the technical side of Koha, the conference will be a demonstration of how users and developers around the world cooperate to improve Free and Open Source Software. software.coop is delighted to host KohaCon in Edinburgh in our tenth anniversary year and this UN International Year of Co-operatives.”

“Koha conferences are always an informative and uplifting event, I have no doubt that this years conference in Edinburgh will be the best conference yet.” said Chris Cormack, one of the original authors of the Koha version 1.0.

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 3, Issue 1: January 2012

Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
Please submit news items to

Table of Contents

• Koha Development
  • Koha 3.6.3 Status
  • Koha 3.4.8 Status
  • Database Schema Bugs
  • PostgreSQL Support
• Koha Community
  • New Koha Libraries
  • Community Gossip
  • Donum: a Norwegian Koha Co-op
  • Catalyst Open Source Academy 2012
• Past Koha Events
  • January General IRC Meeting
  • Global Bug Squashing Day 2012-01-06
• Upcoming Koha Events
  • February General IRC Meeting
  • Global Bug Squashing Day 2012-02-08
  • Marseille Hackfest
  • KohaCon12

Koha Development

Koha 3.6.3 Status
by Chris Nighswonger

The 3.6.x branch is in a string freeze. Koha 3.6.3 is scheduled for release on 25 January 2012.

Koha 3.4.8 Status
by Chris Nighswonger

Koha 3.4.8 is scheduled for release on 28 January 2012.

Database Schema Bugs

Paul Poulain and Jonathan Druart have created a new wiki page, http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/DB_schema_bugs, documenting problems they’ve identified with Koha’s database design. They invite the community to read, add to, or discuss this page.

PostgreSQL Support

Marc Balmer plans to begin work on PostgreSQL support during the March hackfest in Marseille in order to pave the way for future PostgreSQL support in Koha. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/PostgreSQL.

Koha Community

New Koha Libraries

• Bethel University (via ByWater Solutions)
• Mental Health and Education Resource Centre, Christchurch (via Catalyst)
• New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (via Catalyst)
• 246 libraries in the Philippines went live with Koha in the last year. For more info, see http://web.nlp.gov.ph/nlp/?q=node/2300.

Community Gossip

ByWater Solutions has an opening for a Development Specialist.

Chris Cormack has posted a summary of Koha accomplishments in the year 2011 at http://blog.bigballofwax.co.nz/2012/01/01/2011-and-koha-by-the-numbers/.

Chris has also posted sign-off statistics for December at http://blog.bigballofwax.co.nz/2012/01/23/sign-off-statistics-for-december/.

Nicole Engard has been promoted to Vice President of Education at ByWater Solutions.

Melia Meggs has been promoted to Chief Operations Officer at ByWater Solutions.

Equinox Software has formed a Canadian subsidiary.

Ian Walls, Koha 3.8 QA manager, has left ByWater Solutions for a position at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Bob and Irma Birchall from Calyx and Chris Cormack and Kathryn Tyree from Catalyst will be holding a combined Koha stand at Vala2012 in Melbourne from 6-9 February. For more info, see http://www.vala.org.au/vala2012/conf2012.

Donum: a Norwegian Koha Co-op
by Magnus Enger

Donum — Frie biblioteksystemer SA is a co-op that aims to further its members’ economic interests by cooperating in building, developing, and managing software, translations, knowledge, and networks.

The co-op will also mediate relevant contracts and generate spin-offs and user utility by helping to promote and increase knowledge about free library systems and the values they build upon, both in the private and public sector. It also aims to assist with the development and delivery of services related to such systems.

The main activities will be to carry out, organize, maintain, and quality check translations, as well as marketing, training and development of Koha and other free software for the library sector in Norway. The co-op will function as a network and maintainer of fora and meeting places through activities such as organizing user meetings, seminars, and conferences.

The co-op will benefit its members through prioritized and possibly discounted access to training, conferences etc. It will also aid in organizing cost-sharing for new developments related to relevant software.

For more info, see http://donum.no/.

Catalyst Open Source Academy 2012
by Chris Hall, Chris Cormack, Grant Patterson, Javier Romero

Twenty-three high school students from around New Zealand took the opportunity to learn more about open source software development during their summer holidays by participating in the Catalyst Open Source Academy 2012.

In the first week, the students learned to install Ubuntu Linux on their training laptops, familiarised themselves with what the terms Freedom and Community mean for open source projects, and learned basic programming principles and how the web works.

During the second week students worked on an open source project of their choosing. Amongst others there was a Koha group and a group who worked on kiritakikoha, an Android app for Koha (system and end) users.

Four students from the Koha project group used jQuery to create graphs for many of the popular SQL reports at http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/SQL_Reports_Library. A sample of the graphs made by one student can be viewed at http://opac.koha.workbuffer.org/. These can be adapted to graph almost any SQL report and display it on the OPAC and/or the intranet.

The other two students working on the Koha project went through the HTML test report page to improve unit testing coverage. The goal for the week was to increase the percentage of unit testing coverage of Koha by at least 2%, which they did!

By the end of the week the Koha project group had:

• Committed 16 unit tests
• Changed 300 lines of Koha code
• Tested 598 lines of Koha code not previously tested (+2.1%)
• Tested 85 subroutines not previously tested (+2.6%)

The group working on kiritakikoha made suggestions for future improvements in the client and in its appearance, e.g. customised icons for small devices. They worked collaboratively to implement the following features:

• Splitting up the existing search interface into simple and advanced search
• Highlighting search terms in the search results
• Displaying book covers from OpenLibrary and Google in the search results
• Providing a date picker for the place hold dates
• Displaying currently checked out/overdue
• Improved support for low-resolution devices
• Importing library settings via a Quick Response code (2D barcodes which upon scanning with a phone camera can configure kiritakikoha with that library’s settings)

The Academy was an opportunity for these students to experience the software development cycle within the open source community and to make valuable contributions to open source projects.

Past Koha Events

January General IRC Meeting

The January general IRC meeting was held on 4 January 2012.

For more info, including the agenda and links to the minutes, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_4_January_2012.

Global Bug Squashing Day 2012-01-06
by Magnus Enger

Global Bug Squashing Day 2012-01-06
by Magnus Enger

A Global bug squashing day was held on Friday, 6 January 2012, and there was much rejoicing.

For the numbers, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2012-01-06_Global_bug_squashing_day.

Upcoming Koha Events

February General IRC Meeting

The February general IRC meeting will be held on 8 February 2012.

For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_8_February_2012.

Global Bug Squashing Day 2012-02-08
by Magnus Enger

Global Bug Squashing Days are days designated to a concerted effort to get bugs and patches moving along in the right direction.

The next GBSD will be 8 February 2012. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2012-02-08_Global_bug_squashing_day.

Marseille Hackfest
by Paul Poulain

A reminder about the hackfest BibLibre is organizing in Marseille in March!

It’s time to book your flights/trains/car/horse/boat, and tell us if you’re coming. We already have 6 people coming (plus all BibLibre staff, of course) from 4 different countries (France, Germany, Croatia, and USA). We have a lot of chairs and desktops still available!

If you hope to come but still are not sure, don’t hesitate to email kim.nguyen -at- biblibre.com.

Full details are at http://drupal.biblibre.com/en/blog/entry/2012-hackfest-in-europe.

KohaCon12

KohaCon12 will take place this June in central Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

The main conference will be held Tuesday, 5 June to Thursday, 7 June.

A hackfest will be held Saturday, 9 June to Monday, 11 June.

For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Category:KohaCon12 and http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Wishlist_for_KohaCon12.

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 2, Issue 12: December 2011

Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
Please submit news items to

Table of Contents

• Koha Development
  • Koha 3.6.2 Released
  • Koha 3.4.7 Released
  • Koha 3.2.11 Released
  • Koha 3.4.8 Status
• Koha Community
  • New Koha Libraries
  • Community Gossip
  • Koha in Fiji
• Past Koha Events
  • December General IRC Meeting
  • Global Bug Squashing Day 2011-12-07
• Upcoming Koha Events
  • January General IRC Meeting
  • Global Bug Squashing Day 2011-01-06
  • Marseilles Hackfest

Koha Development

Koha 3.6.2 Released
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.6.2.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.02.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.02.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.02.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.02.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.6.2 are at http://koha-community.org/koha-3-6-2.

Koha 3.4.7 Released
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.4.7.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.07.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.07.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.07.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.07.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.4.7 are at http://koha-community.org/koha-3-4-7.

Koha 3.2.11 Released
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.2.11.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.11.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.11.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.11.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.11.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.2.11 are at http://koha-community.org/koha-3-2-11.

Koha 3.4.8 Status
by Chris Nighswonger

Koha 3.4.8 will be released on 14 January 2012. The 3.4.x branch will enter a string freeze on 8 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC.

Koha Community

New Koha Libraries

• Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular – Programa por la Paz (via Organizadatos)
• Colegio San Bartolomé La Merced (via Organizadatos)
• Corporación Universitaria CENDA (via Organizadatos)
• Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas, SINCHI (via Organizadatos)
• Red de Museodata para Bibliotecas de Museos (via Organizadatos)

Community Gossip

Equinox Software has bought a new office building and is moving into it.

Kyle Hall has updated his Koha virtual appliances to 3.6, a complete rebuild using Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) instead of Lenny. For more info, see http://millruntech.com/koha/koha-virtual-appliances.

Owen Leonard is working on replacing the YUI Library in Koha with jQueryUI. For more info, see his blog post at http://www.myacpl.org/koha/?p=701.

Stefano Bargioni has made available MARCgrep.pl, a Perl script to filter or count MARC records based on the contents of tag names, indicators, or subfields. For more info, see http://en.pusc.it/bib/MARCgrep.

Koha in Fiji
by Smita Biswas

I was seconded along with the Manager of Tauranga City Library, Jill Best, to implement Koha in the first public library in Fiji. The Nadi Town Council Library went live on Dec 6 2011 on version 3.6. We did it as a pilot project, which took about 4 months for me to learn and install on a local machine and then assist the Nadi Council IT officer to download a stable release. I then visited Nadi for a week along with Jill for implementation and training. We did a simple LAN set up between the Server and two staff machines, one being used for circulation and other for cataloguing and acquistion. Hopefully they will able to host their database on the web in the future.

There is considerable interest among other Fiji public libraries, due to the enthusiastic campaign by Jill, who has been a long-time volunteer and donor of books to the Fiji Libraries.

Since I had never worked with Koha or Linux I was finding it quite hard in the beginning just following the downloading instructions from the wiki. I am very grateful for the help provided by Steven and Richard from Technology Wise Ltd, Tauranga, NZ. They were amazing, they took me under their wing and assisted me with the first install. Thereafter I could do a second install under Richard’s guidance.

Richard was also very good in assisting the Nadi Council IT officer to do the install, including working on his server remotely when the Council IT officer found it hard going due to lack of experience and knowledge of Linux. I also need to thank Paul Nielsen, Library Manager of Hauraki District Council Library, NZ, for helping me with the system settings. What a great user group we have here!!

I am definitely a Koha convert now, seeing how easy it is to install and implement–this coming from a Librarian (with some systems backgroaund). I hope to convince our Council IT to consider Koha in future. I am also happy to talk to any other groups or libraries about my experience of doing this project. Jill is already lining me up for next year for Suva libraries and maybe Solomon Islands. I am just taking a breather at the moment. It was very very hot…

Smita Biswas, ALIANZA, RLIANZA
Collections & Information Manager
Tauranga City Library
Tauranga City Council
Ph 07 5777260
M 0275999241
E smita.biswas@tauranga.govt.nz
www.tauranga.govt.nz

Past Koha Events

December General IRC Meeting

The December general IRC meeting was held on 7 December 2011. For more info, including the agenda and links to the minutes, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_7_December_2011.

Global Bug Squashing Day 2011-12-07
by Magnus Enger

A Global Bug Sqashing Day was held on 7 December 2011, and there was much rejoicing.

For the numbers, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2011-12-07_Global_bug_squashing_day.

Upcoming Koha Events

January General IRC Meeting

The January general IRC meeting will be held on 4 January 2012. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_4_January_2012.

Global Bug Squashing Day 2012-01-06
by Magnus Enger

Global Bug Squashing Days are days designated to a concerted effort to get bugs and patches moving along in the right direction.

The next GBSD will be 6 January 2012. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2012-01-06_Global_bug_squashing_day.

Marseille Hackfest
by Paul Poulain

BibLibre will be hosting a hackfest in Marseille, France, from Monday to Friday, 19-23 March 2012. For more info, see http://drupal.biblibre.com/en/blog/entry/2012-hackfest-in-europe.

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 2, Issue 11: November 2011

Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
Please submit news items to

Table of Contents

• Koha Development
  • Koha 3.4.6 Released
  • Koha 3.4.x String Freeze
  • Koha 3.6.1 Released
  • Request for Koha Data for Development
• Koha Community
  • New Koha Libraries
  • Community Gossip
  • PTFS/LibLime Granted Provisional NZ Koha Trademark
• Past Koha Events
  • KohaCon11 Reports
  • November General IRC Meeting
  • Global Bug Squashing Day
• Upcoming Koha Events
  • December General IRC Meeting
  • KohaCon12

Koha Development

Koha 3.4.6 Released
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.4.6.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.06.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.06.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.06.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.06.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.4.6 are at http://koha-community.org/koha-3-4-6.

Koha 3.4.x String Freeze
by Chris Nighswonger

The 3.4.x branch will enter a string freeze on 30 November. Koha 3.4.7 will release on 7 December.

Koha 3.6.1 Released
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.6.1.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.01.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.01.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.01.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.01.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.6.1 are at http://koha-community.org/koha-3-6-1.

Request for Koha Data for Development
by Chris Nighswonger

A common problem among those of us who do development work on Koha is the lack of complete datasets for the development and testing of features. This is probably more of a problem for those of us who do not support a large variety of organizations running Koha.

I would like to see some good, sanitized datasets available for development and testing. Several of us have pleaded for this for years. Just now, the lack of a good dataset including a sizable number of serials is preventing me from doing some testing and development on DataTables integration work, which has been started by Biblibre.

So, this is a request to all of you libraries out there with small, medium, or large datasets who would be willing to contribute sanitized data for development purposes, to do so. It would be a great way to give back to the community that has provided such a wonderful product with all of its attendant benefits.

Kind Regards,
Chris Nighswonger
Koha 3.4/3.6 Release Maintainer
cnighswonger@foundations.edu

Koha Community

New Koha Libraries

• Hernando County Public Library (via ByWater Solutions)
• Reserve Bank of New Zealand (via Catalyst)
• Shasta Historical Society (via ByWater Solutions)

Community Gossip

Albert Oller has joined ByWater Solutions as Development Support Specialist.

ByWater Solutions has posted a Koha Testing Plan at http://bywatersolutions.com/koha-testing-plan/.

Chris Cormack has posted a visualisation of when work is done on Koha at http://blog.bigballofwax.co.nz/2011/11/04/nice-visualisation-of-when-work-is-done-on-koha/.

Chris Hall is back working on Koha at Catalyst for the New Zealand summer.

Ed Veal has joined ByWater Solutions as Development Support Specialist.

Ian Walls writes about integrating Solr into Koha at http://bywatersolutions.com/2011/11/02/kohacon-11-solr-and-koha/.

Laurence Lefaucheur is now posting a French translation of the Koha community newsletter at http://www.koha-fr.org/category/tags/newsletter.

Paul Poulain, Koha 3.8 Release Manager, will be publishing a monthly newsletter summarizing 3.8 developments of the previous month. His first issue can be read at http://lists.koha-community.org/pipermail/koha-devel/2011-November/036525.html.

Paul Poulain has also posted a first draft of a document outlining how the release manager pushes a patch at http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/How_the_RM_push.

PTFS/LibLime Granted Provisional NZ Koha Trademark

PTFS/LibLime has been granted provisional use of a trademark for the use of the term Koha as it applies to Integrated Library Software (ILS) in New Zealand. PTFS’s press release is at http://www.liblime.com/ptfsliblime-granted-provisional-use-of-koha-trademark-in-new-zealand?a=1&c=1254.

Joann Ransom’s plea to assist Horowhenua Library Trust in disputing the decision is at http://library-matters.blogspot.com/2011/11/plea-for-help-from-horowhenua-library.html; her update is at http://library-matters.blogspot.com/2011/11/update-on-nz-koha-trademark.html.

Nicole Engard is maintaining a bibliography of the dispute. Her initial post is at http://www.web2learning.net/archives/4910; updates are at http://www.web2learning.net/archives/4915 and http://www.web2learning.net/archives/4921. The entire bibliography can be viewed at https://www.zotero.org/groups/koha/items/collectionKey/RR77I3HT/order/dateModified.

Past Koha Events

KohaCon11 Reports

KohaCon11 was held 31 October to 6 November 2011 in Thane, India.

Bob Birchall reports:

One of the exciting aspects of the Hackfest was that a Koha training course was conducted for about 36 local librarians and students. Run over two days, the course covered all major features of Koha. Trainers were Jo Ransom (New Zealand), Marijana Glavica (Croatia), Irma and Bob Birchall (Australia) and Savitra Sirohi (India); Brooke Johnson (US) helped out and ByWater Solutions provided the training Koha instance – a real international effort! It was a pleasure to teach these librarians who were so hungry for knowledge of Koha. Also during the Hackfest the translation of Koha into Hindi was progressed and translation into Marathi started. Congratulations to the staff and students of VPM Thane for this outstanding contribution to Koha.

Robin Sheat reports:

A few of us got together to work on improving Koha’s Open Library integration. On the OL side there was Noufal Ibrahim and Anand Chitipothu. From the Koha side, Dobrica Pavlinušić, Ian Walls, Savitra Sirohi, and I spent time discussing how to make things work. I then spent much of the hackfest adding features to Koha that would allow Open Library to become something of a central cover repository with streamlined uploading to it. At the same time, Anand was working on the APIs on the OL side that Koha would talk to to make this easy. This project is still a work in progress, but the current state can be seen at http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=7152. For more stuff about the Open Library + Koha integration that went on, have a look at Noufal’s blog post at http://blog.openlibrary.org/?p=954.

JoAnn Ransom blogged about some of her KohaCon11 experiences at http://library-matters.blogspot.com/2011/10/notes-from-day-1-of-kohacon11-in-thane.html. The slides from her keynote address are at http://www.slideshare.net/jransom/it-takes-a-village-9955138.

Paul Poulain blogged about BibLibre’s presentations at http://drupal.biblibre.com/en/blog/entry/kohacon11-our-presentations.

Mumbai-based newspaper DNA reported on KohaCon11 at http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?edorsup=Sup&queryed=37&querypage=7&boxid=30762914&parentid=153604&eddate=11/05/2011.

November General IRC Meeting

The November general IRC meeting was held on 16 November 2011. For more info, including the agenda and links to the minutes, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_16_November_2011.

Global Bug Squashing Day
by Magnus Enger

A Global bug sqashing day was held on 4 November 2011, and there was much rejoicing.

For the numbers, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2011-11-04_Global_bug_squashing_day.

Upcoming Koha Events

December General IRC Meeting

The December general IRC meeting will be held on 7 December 2011. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_7_December_2011.

KohaCon12

MJ Ray reports that KohaCon12 will probably be held 5-7 June 2012 for the conference and 9-11 June for the hackfest.

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 2, Issue 10: October 2011

Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
Please submit news items to

Table of Contents

• Koha Developments
  • Koha 3.4.5 Released
  • Koha 3.6.0 Released
  • Enhanced Koha 3.6.x Release Notes
  • Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, Which Witch?
  • Koha 3.8.0 Release Team Elected
  • A Message from the Koha 3.8.0 Release Manager
• Koha Community
  • New Koha Libraries
  • Community Gossip
  • Koha in a Norwegian Library School
  • Koha OPAC Web App
• Past Koha Events
  • Koha 3.6.0 Released During Access2011 Conference
  • October General IRC Meeting
• Upcoming Koha Events
  • KohaCon11
  • Global Bug Squashing Day Proposed
  • November General IRC Meeting
  • KohaCon12: Welcome to Edinburgh!

Koha Developments

Koha 3.4.5 Released
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.4.5.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.05.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.05.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.05.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.05.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.4.5 are below the fold.

Come and get it!

Continue reading “Koha 3.4.5 Available” »

Koha 3.6.0 Released
by Chris Cormack

It is with great pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.6.0.

This is major feature release, containing 85 enhancements and 356 bugfixes. A total of 728 patches have been included from 60 developers in this release. A big thanks goes out to all of them, plus all the other people involved in this release.

You can download this release at http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.06.00.000.tar.gz or you can wait a couple of days for the packages to appear at http://debian.koha-community.org.

Release notes are available below the fold.

Continue reading “Koha 3.6.0 Released” »

Enhanced Koha 3.6.x Release Notes
by Nicole Engard

Just like with the release of 3.4, I have edited the release notes for Koha 3.6 to include links to related manual pages and tutorial videos. I hope this helps you find the new features in your Koha installation.

For more info, see http://bywatersolutions.com/2011/10/28/koha-3-6-x-release-notes

Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, Which Witch?
by Chris Cormack

This guy!

With the release of Koha 3.6.0 my tenure as Release Manager is over. I’d like to thank everyone who has helped my the last 2 releases happen.

I am of course not leaving the community, but I am now freed up to do more coding again. Also, as I am no longer RM I can speak a little more freely about things which is nice also.

I am sure Koha 3.8.0 will be a great release, and I hope to get a bunch of my code into it also.

The RM is dead! Long live the RM!

Koha 3.8.0 Release Team Elected
by Chris Cormack

During the October General IRC meeting, amongst a lot of other discussion and agenda items, the positions for the 3.8 release of Koha were filled. Congratulations to all those appointed:

• Release Manager: Paul Poulain, BibLibre, France
• Release Maintainer: Chris Nighswonger, FBC, USA (Unless someone volunteers before the 3.6.0 release)
• QA Manager: Ian Walls, ByWater Solutions, USA
• Assistant QA Managers: Marcel de Rooy, Rijksmuseum, Netherlands; Jonathan Druart, BibLibre, France
• Translation Manager: Frédéric Demians, Tamil, France
• Assistant Translation Manager: Katrin Fischer, BSZ, Germany
• Documentation Manager: Nicole Engard, ByWater Solutions, USA
• Bug Wranglers: Katrin Fischer, BSZ, Germany; Magnus Enger, Libriotech, Norway; Owen Leonard, ACPL, USA
• Packaging Manager: Robin Sheat, Catalyst IT, New Zealand
• Assistant Packaging Manager: Mason James, KohaAloha, New Zealand
• Bus Driver (AKA meeting chair): Brooke Johnson, USA

We are still looking for people to be Module Champions, what this role entails is advocating for a module of Koha. Do you think circulation is important? You could be the Circulation Champion, how about serials? You know you have secretly always wanted to take ownership of a section of Koha you care about, now is your chance!

A Message from the Koha 3.8.0 Release Manager
by Paul Poulain

Koha 3.6.0 has been released, so it’s time to start working on Koha 3.8.0. I’ve been chosen as Release Manager, which is a big responsibility. I’ll continue the good work Chris has done and promote some new ideas or ways of doing things.

In the next weeks, I plan to submit a global roadmap that will include short-term as well as long-term goals for Koha, on both functional and technical areas. Stay tuned on the koha-devel mailing list if you’re interested. And don’t hesitate to join us and participate!

Koha Community

New Koha Libraries

• Cornish College of the Arts (via ByWater Solutions)
• Corpus Christi Public Libraries (via ByWater Solutions)
• Fox Chase Cancer Centers’s Talbot Research Library (via ByWater Solutions)
• Green Mountain College’s Griswold Library (via ByWater Solutions)
• Kenya Human Rights Commission Resource Center (via Busara Core Solutions)
• Service Commun de la Documentation de l’Université de Limoges (via BibLibre)

Community Gossip

Chris Nighswonger has been working on getting the master branch of Koha running on Windows XP. He’s posted his progress to the wiki at http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Koha_3.4.

Adrien Saurat has joined BibLibre as Support/Maintenance Manager.

Gaetan Boisson has joined BibLibre as Project Lead.

Nicole Engard has made her fast add framework even faster. Details are at http://bywatersolutions.com/2011/10/17/faster-fast-add-framework-redux.

Kathryn Tyree has joined Catalyst as Koha project manager.

Robin Sheat of Catalyst will be giving a talk titled “Koha: Bringing libraries into the present day” at the OSDC conference in Canberra, Australia, on 16 November. For more info, see http://osdc.com.au/schedule/#kohabringinglibra.

And lots of people are doing lots of fun things at KohaCon11!

Koha in a Norwegian Library School
by Magnus Enger

The library program at the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (http://www.hioa.no/eng/) is now offering personal Koha installations to all first and second year students – a total of about 225 students. Installations will be used during the whole of the education, including for mandatory assignments in cataloging. The installations utilize the Debian packages, and the university college is handling all hosting and installation in-house.

Koha OPAC Web App
by Stefano Bargioni

I’ve created a Koha OPAC for smartphones and tablets. It is located at http://catalogo.pusc.it/mobile/ and can be accessed not only from smartphones but also from desktop PCs using any modern browser. It is a very simple OPAC interface, up to now.

Based on jQuery Mobile, it accesses Koha using its SRU server. So it is not an app, nor a set of CSS that adapt Koha web pages to little screens. It is a web app, if I may say so.

For more info, contact bargioni@pusc.it.

Past Koha Events

Koha 3.6.0 Released During Access2011 Conference
by Chris Cormack

Last Thursday 20th October I gave a talk at Access2011: The Library is Open in Vancouver titled Tātou tātou: Caring and sharing in a Free and Open source Project. The talk focused on lessons learned by the Koha community that would be of interest to other emerging open source software communities. Here is a link to the talk.

It was particularly appropriate to the international nature of the Koha community that a kiwi guy could write the release notes, push patches and release Koha 3.6.0 while away in Vancouver.

As many of you know Koha 3.6.0 was a major and very satisfying release to be part of. With 85 enhancements and 356 bugfixes Koha 3.6.0 included 728 patches from 60 developers. You can find out who those developers were and what they contributed here. The release notes are published here.

One last huge thanks to everyone that contributed to to 3.6.0 and all the best to the release team for 3.8.0!

October General IRC Meeting

The October general IRC meeting was held on 5 October 2011. For more info, including the agenda and links to the minutes, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_5_October_2011.

Upcoming Koha Events

KohaCon11

KohaCon11 is being held 31 October 2011 to 6 November 2011 in Thane, India.

The program for KohaCon11 is at http://kohacon11.vpmthane.org/ocs/index.php/k/k11/schedConf/program.

For more info, see http://kohacon11.vpmthane.org/ocs/index.php/k/k11.

Global Bug Squashing Day Proposed
by Magnus Enger

Dear Community!

After colluding with my fellow bug wrangler Katrin I’d like to propose 04 November as the date of the next GBSD: http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2011-11-04_Global_bug_squashing_day.

This coincides with the first day of the hackfest at KohaCon11. Maybe we could get a bit of a Google Hangout going, or something? We’ll see…

Anyway: Be there or be [_]!

November General IRC Meeting

The November general IRC meeting will be held on 16 November 2011. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_16_November_2011.

KohaCon12: Welcome to Edinburgh!
by MJ Ray

I’d like to send thanks from software.coop to everyone who voted for Edinburgh in the recent vote. I look forward to welcoming you next summer and we’ll release more details as soon as they are confirmed, as well as asking for feedback on a couple of social event ideas.

2012 is software.coop’s tenth anniversary and also the United Nations International Year of Co-operatives, so it’s a great time for a celebration and collaboration. On that note, I’d also like to thank the people who have sent expressions of interest in helping out with running the event. We’ll ask other co-ops to assist too, but we may well take up some of these offers.

Finally, all the best to the KohaCon11 team for the conference that’s about to start. I’m sorry I’m not there, but we’ve already started work on KohaCon12. Have a great time for us and I look forward to hearing much news from India!

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 2, Issue 8: August 2011

Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
Please submit news items to

Table of Contents

• Koha Developments
  • Koha 3.4.4 Available
  • Koha 3.6 Update
  • Koha 3.2 End-of-Life
• Koha Community
  • New Koha Libraries
  • Community Gossip
• Past Koha Events
  • New Zealand Koha Users Group Meeting
  • Global Bug Squashing Day #3
  • August General IRC Meeting
• Upcoming Koha Events
  • Global Bug Squashing Day #4
  • September General IRC Meeting
  • KohaCon11
  • KohaCon12

Koha Developments

Koha 3.4.4 Available
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.4.4.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.04.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.04.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.04.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.04.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.4.4 are below the fold.

Come and get it!

Continue reading “Koha 3.4.4 Available” »

Koha 3.6 Update
by Chris Cormack

We are rapidly closing in on the 3.6.0 release, so I thought it would be good remind everyone of the key dates.

• Feature freeze – 22 September 23:59 UTC – From this point on, no new features will be considered for inclusion into 3.6.0
• String freeze – 8 October 23:59 UTC – no bugs that change templates accepted after this point. This allows the translators to translate without things changing on them
• Translations finished – 18 October 23:59 UTC – Translations submitted, so that they can be tested before release
• Release – 22 October

Koha 3.2 End-of-Life

It was decided at the August general IRC meeting that Koha 3.2 has reached the end of its life.

Koha Community

New Koha Libraries

• C.G. Jung Institute of New York (via ByWater Solutions)
• CAUSE (Comfort for America’s Uniformed Services) (via ByWater Solutions)
• Centenary College (via ByWater Solutions)
• Central Kansas Library System (via ByWater Solutions)
• All schools in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island are now using Koha.

Community Gossip

Paul Poulain of BibLibre is assisting 3.6 Quality Assurance Manager Ian Walls in reducing the backlog of patches waiting for QA testing.

Lori Bowen Ayre is working on a spreadsheet comparing Evergreen & Koha features.

Brenda Chawner asked community members several years ago to complete a survey as part of her PhD research on factors affecting satisfaction with the experience of a free/libre open source software project. Brenda recently thanked the community and provided an abstract of her PhD thesis. For more info, see http://markmail.org/message/gdofvpmbgseao2vb.

Joy Nelson joined ByWater Solutions as their Migration Support Specialist.

Melia Meggs joined ByWater Solutions as their Operations Manager.

Hal Bright reports that the Farmington Libraries has integrated its Koha database into a mobile app powered by the Boopsie company in cooperation with its vendor, ByWater Solutions. For more info and a demo, see http://flct.boopsie.com.

Equinox Software is looking to hire a Library Data and Support Specialist.

ByWater Solutions is looking to hire a Perl developer for their support desk.

Past Koha Events

New Zealand Koha Users Group Meeting
by Chris Cormack

Today I had the great fortune of attending the first New Zealand Koha users group meeting, in the birthplace of Koha, Horowhenua. There were 51 attendees and even road closures and snow didn’t stop people attending. There was a really good mix of Library types, I think 18 from Publics, 18 from specials, and the rest schools, corporate and academic.

It was run as an unconference so the first task of the day was to decide what would be talked about the rest of the day. The programme that we came up with was:

• The community – How to get involved and make the most
• Installation/migration/training and why should we use Koha
• Features – what’s there, and what would we like added
• Serials, acquisitions, cataloguing
• Managing digital resources
• Consortia
• And one other I have forgotten

The discussions went really well, with lots of participation. It definitely won’t be the last meeting, I think we are leaning towards 2 a year but that’s something that will be decided on the mailing lists.

While we were busy plotting plans to take over the world, (or at least New Zealand) Koha 3.4.3 was released.

Global Bug Squashing Day #3
by Magnus Enger

Global bug squashing days are dedicated to getting bugs and patches moving toward resolution.

The third GBSD coincided with holidays and other obligations for some people, but we still managed to move a fair number of bugs along. These numbers below show how many bugs were moved to a new status during the day:

• Needs Signoff: 13
• Signed Off: 12
• Passed QA: 6
• Pushed: 11
• Resolved: 30

For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2011-08-05_Global_bug_squashing_day.

August General IRC Meeting

The August general IRC meeting was held on 2 August 2011. Highlights from the meeting include:

• Koha 3.2 has reached its end of life.
• The bare minimum requirement for a vendor to be listed on the community website is a visible link to the community website on the main Koha page of the vendor’s website.
• Daniel Grobani is the new newsletter editor.
• Those interested in a role in 3.8 should express interest to the mailing list by 22 September for an October election.

For more info, including links to the minutes, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_2_August_2011.

Upcoming Koha Events

Global Bug Squashing Day #4

The next GBSD will occur on Friday, 2 September 2011. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2011-09-02_Global_bug_squashing_day.

September General IRC Meeting

The next general IRC meeting is 7 September 2011 1800 UTC. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_7_September_2011.

KohaCon11

KohaCon11 will be held 31 October 2011 to 6 November 2011 in Thane, India.

The organizers have extended the deadline for submitting papers from 15 August to 30 August 2011.

For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Category:KohaCon11 or http://kohacon11.vpmthane.org/ocs/index.php/k/k11.

KohaCon12

Proposals for KohaCon12 are being accepted until 1 September 2011. Voting will take place through 1 October 2011.

Proposals have been made by software.coop in the UK and Washoe County Library System in Reno, Nevada, USA.

For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Category:KohaCon12.

Table of Contents

• Koha Developments
  • Koha 3.4.3 Available
  • SolR for Koha
• Koha Community
  • New Spanish Community Site
  • Half Way to Koha 3.6
  • Seeking Newsletter Editor
• Koha Events
  • Global Sign Off Day
  • KohaCon12 Hosting Proposals Being Accepted

Koha Developments

Koha 3.4.3 Available
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.4.3.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.03.tar.gz

You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.03.tar.gz.MD5

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.03.tar.gz.MD5.asc

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.03.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.4.3 are below the fold.

Come and get it!

Continue reading “Koha 3.4.3 is now available” »

SolR for Koha
by Paul Poulain

BibLibre is working hard for months to implement a new search engine for Koha: solR. Two french libraries have partially sponsored the work. One of them is now live with Koha/solR : the Limoges public library. The OPAC can be seen here: http://catalogue.bm-limoges.fr

If you search for something (in french please ), like “histoire contemporaine”, you’ll see some changes in the facets : what is “faceted” is chosen by the library through the Koha admin module. On the right of each facet the number of records using this facet is displayed (and is correct).

Other new features in Koha with solR search engine can be seen only in the admin interface, or when digging the code. For example you can define the indexes through the admin module (no need to update cryptic configuration files)

If you want to have a look at the code, you can see the code in our solr branch: http://git.biblibre.com/?p=koha;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/dev/solr Note it’s based on HTML::Template, not Template::Toolkit. Also note that Zebra support is broken, but the code should be modular enough to have it reintroduced. We thought/found it was better to almost completely rewrite the search engine part to make it modular than to try to add solR support over zebra-related code.

When will it be available in official Koha? As soon as possible. Can we estimate how much time? It won’t be in 3.6 probably, it’s too much work. So you’ll have to wait for the 2012-april or even the 2012-oct version.

Koha Community

New Spanish Community Site
by Tomás Cohen Arazi

We are pleased to announce the availability of the Spanish-speaking community’s Koha portal. You will find in it the translated official announcements and several resources and news related to the Spanish-speaking Koha community.

We hope to get your feedback and support to make this site full of relevant information for the community.

The address: http://es.koha-community.org

Halfway to Koha 3.6
by Chris Cormack

We have hit the halfway mark, for the release of the 3.6.0 feature release. 3.4.3 was just released. I just had a thought, that perhaps there are some people who aren’t sure how releases for Koha work. So I’ll do a brief summary.

We work on a time based release cycle. All code is developed in the open, from multiple developers all around the world. This code is separated into adding new features, and fixing bugs. New features are released ever six months, these are the x.x.0 releases, (3.2.0, 3.4.0, 3.6.0 etc). But every month we release a bugfix release also, these are the 3.4.1, 3.4.2 etc releases.

So 3.4.0 was release April 22, 3.6.0 will be release October 22. 3.4.3 will be released July 22. So the 22nd of each month is an important date in the Koha world.

Read more.

Seeking Newsletter Editor
by Nicole C. Engard

This will be my last issue as Koha Newsletter editor. The community is seeking a new editor to take over for the August issue and continue at least through December 2012. That will be a 1.5 year term (as mine has been). If you would like to volunteer please do so at the next Koha meeting or place your proposal on the agenda if you cannot attend the meeting.

Koha Events

Global Sign Off Day
by Magnus Enger

The next Global Bug Squashing and Sign Off Day will be the 8th of August (in all timezones). Learn more on the Koha wiki.

KohaCon12 Hosting Proposals Being Accepted
by Magnus Enger

• Deadline for proposals: 1st September 2011.

• Deadline for voting: 1st October 2011. http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Category:KohaCon12

So far there is one proposal, from software.coop in the UK: http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Proposals_for_KohaCon12

Want to be a host for KohaCon12? Better add yourself to that page!

 
 
Newsletter edited by Nicole C. Engard, Koha Documentation Manager.