LINK 2.0 Koha

Report from ALA: the Koha and Open Source ILS communities

The Open Source ILS Community

ALA was a week ago and I realized I haven't blogged about it yet!  This is a summary of a few events that I attended having to do with Koha or Open Source.  These events range from a general meeting of open source ILS users (OSS4PL), to a Koha users group meeting (KUDOS), to a demonstration of new Koha development.  Perhaps one of the most difficult things to keep straight about open source ILS software is that there are different software products (Koha, Evergreen and more) and for each of these, libraries have the option to have a vendor provide support (we are using LibLime) or to go it on their own. As the number of libraries using an Open Source ILS increases, the community of users, developers and vendors is figuring out how to organize themselves and ultimately work together.

OSS4PL

OSS4PL stands for Open Source Software for Public Libraries.  The goal of this group is to foster communication between the different open source ILS software users.  At the OSS4PL "unconference" at ALA, libraries using both Evergreen and Koha gathered at the beautiful Harold Washington Library Center (Chicago PL).  In one exercise we organized ourselves into groups to discuss a particular topic.  Naturally, we organized ourselves into Koha and Evergreen groups! This was beneficial to those of us in attendance from SCLS because we made some new Koha contacts.  The second session was a more general discussion of issues facing the open source ILS community.  From this session we learned a bit more about Evergreen and its development path.  This event was organized by the King County Library System and the Galecia Group.

KUDOS Meeting

KUDOS is a U.S. users group for libraries using Koha.  Present at the KUDOS meeting were representatives from Koha libraries of all types and sizes; some use a vendor and some support Koha on their own.  The primary focus of this group is to develop ways that Koha users can share information with each other.  Goals include creating an easy-to-use list of U.S. libraries that use Koha, sharing information on development projects and holding an annual user conference.  John Brice of Crawford County Federated Library System has been doing the arduous work of ratifying KUDOS as a non-profit organization.  KUDOS will need to work within the international Koha community, regional communites (such as Wisconsin) and any vendor communities that may  develop.

LibLime Demonstrations

LibLime, our Koha support vendor, was doing Koha demonstrations throughout ALA.  I attended a demonstration of features being developed by LibLime that will be available in a future release of Koha.  Ian Walls of NYU Health Sciences Library tweeted the presentation as it was happening. (How cool is that?) Here is a summary of that Twitter feed as posted by Nicole Engard on her Open Sesame blog.

LibLime Gives Back to the Community

Some of you were fortunate to attend ALA and perhaps attended a LibLime presentation on how they give back to the community.  But if you weren't there, or did not attend the presentation, LibLime summarizes their projects on their web site.  Take a look; it's quite impressive.

LibLime/Koha Demonstrations at ALA

If you are going to ALA this weekend, you might be interested in the following Koha demos at the LibLime booth.

In the Booth (#1134): Presentations

Saturday, July 11th

10:00 a.m. – We Give Back: LibLime's Contributions to the Library Community 

Learn more about LibLime's open-source business model and what the impact is on the library community. LibLime's CEO, Joshua Ferraro, will review three ways that LibLime 'gives back': ‡biblios.net, Koha with Class and LibLime's Koha Community Contributions.

 

1:00 p.m. – Mission Possible: the LibLime Data Migration Process

Extraction, field mapping, normalization, oh my! LibLime's Senior Vice-President Operations, Debra Denault, presents an overview of the process of migrating to Koha through LibLime.

 

3:30 p.m. – Koha Demo: OPAC

An introduction to Koha's next-generation OPAC. LibLime's Application Support Librarian, Maria Laude, presents Koha's OPAC, including some of the new customer-sponsored enhancements and third-party integration.

 

Sunday, July 12th

9:30 a.m. – 4,000 Users and Growing! ‡biblios.net

‡biblios.net is a FREE browser-based cataloging service with a data store containing over thirty-five million records. Records are licensed under the Open Data Commons, making the service the world's largest repository of freely-licensed library records!

 

2:00 p.m. – Coming Soon! 

A sneak peek at the new functionality that will soon be available to LibLime's customers. LibLime's Senior Business Analyst, Daniel Sweeney, gives an overview of customer-sponsored projects including a new acquisitions solution, improved consortial support, and academic functionality.

 

3:30 p.m. – Koha Demo: OPAC

An introduction to Koha's next-generation OPAC. LibLime's Application Support Librarian, Maria Laude, presents Koha's OPAC, including some of the new customer-sponsored enhancements and third-party integration.

 

Monday, July 13th

9:30 a.m. – We Give Back: LibLime's Contributions to the Library Community

Learn more about LibLime's open-source business model and what the impact is on the library community. LibLime's CEO, Joshua Ferraro, will review three ways that LibLime 'gives back': ‡biblios.net, Koha with Class and LibLime's Koha Community Contributions.

 

1:00 p.m. –  Koha Demo: Staff Side

An introduction to Koha's staff modules. LibLime's Senior Vice-President Operations, Debra Denault, presents on Koha's Circulation, Technical Services and Administrative functionality.

 

3:00 p.m. – Coming Soon!

A sneak peek at the new functionality that will soon be available to LibLime's customers. LibLime's Senior Business Analyst, Daniel Sweeney, gives an overview of customer-sponsored projects including a new acquisitions solution, improved consortial support, and academic functionality.

 

Tuesday, July 14th

9:30 a.m. – Koha Demo: Staff Side

An introduction to Koha's staff modules. LibLime's Senior Vice-President Operations, Debra Denault, presents on Koha's Circulation, Technical Services and Administrative functionality.

 

11:00 a.m. –  4,000 Users and Growing! ‡biblios.net

‡biblios.net is a FREE browser-based cataloging service with a data store containing over thirty-five million records. Records are licensed under the Open Data Commons, making the service the world's largest repository of freely-licensed library records!

 

Two Koha User Group Opportunities

Wisconsin Koha Enthusiasts Inaugural Meeting

Several libraries in Wisconsin are using Koha already and others are in the process of migrating to Koha.  Many others are interested in Koha (and other open source options).  Koha enthusiasts of all kinds will benefit from a meeting to keep up to date on what is happening with Koha and Koha related events.  There is also a need for Koha users to pool resources, knowledge and troubleshooting information.  We have an opportunity to have a greater influence on Koha development and features than we could individually.  Organizers are proposing that we call this  group the Wisconsin Koha Enthusiasts (WisKE)--think "Wisconsin Key."

The first meeting of the Wisconsin Koha Enthusiasts (WisKE) will be held from 2 to 4 PM on July 29, following WiLS World.  WiLS is graciously allowing us to use a meeting room at the Pyle Center.  This will be an informal meeting for anyone who is using Koha, anyone who is interested in migrating to Koha or anyone who is interested in Open Source to get together and talk about Koha.
If you have any questions, please contact Cory Jaeger (CJaeger@dce.k12.wi.us) or Vicki Teal Lovely (vtl@scls.lib.wi.us).

If you are interested in attending the Wisconsin Koha Enthusiasts meeting on July 29, please fill out the following brief survey:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=enformkey=cmpNNERfaXVnSGlVTFNydkdnT0dqZFE6MA..

KUDOS Meeting at ALA in Chicago

KUDOS is a US-Based Koha Users & Developers Group

Meeting:  KUDOS (Koha Users and Developers of Open Source) Meeting
Date: Sunday, 7/12/2009
Time: 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Location: Hyatt Regency Chicago (not the Hyatt that’s close to the convention center)
Room: Grand Suite 3

Our First Development Project Approved--Migration Report Weeks 5-8 (June 1-24)

These past few weeks all of the Implementation Committee members have been juggling one or more development projects which entails participating in conference calls and reviewing written specifications.  They've been learning how to use Google Groups, Google calendars, gmail and the LibLime Google App site which are the tools LibLime and Automation are using to manage this project.  AND, everyone is learning how Koha works.  It's been busy, confusing, and exhilarating all at once!  We really appreciate the commitment and dedication that everyone is putting into this project.

We've submitted our first acceptance for a development project specification today--"Finding Items and Patrons with the Significant Digits of the Barcode".  This will give staff the to ability to enter only the significant digits of patron and item barcodes.  For example, if the prefix for an item barcode is 39078, the library staff member does not need to enter the 39078 or any zeros between it and the significant digits.  This is a simple project, but an important one.  Even this simple project required the effort to read and respond to the written specifications which took us about a month to do!

Our Newest Development Project--Migration Report Weeks 3&4 (May 18-29)

We have decided to move ahead with the project to allow patrons to inactivate and reactivate holds.  An inactivated hold allows the patron to move through the hold queue without losing their place, but the hold will not be filled until it is reactivated.  Patrons use this to manage their holds when going on vacation or to make sure they don't receive later episodes of a television series before earlier ones.  It can also be used to keep a lot of holds from coming in all at once.  This is a biggy for us!

During this two-week period, we had several development calls with Daniel Sweeney.  We've decided to table the project that had to do with displaying the status of holds in the PAC.  The problem we had was with the wording.  In the current version of the PAC, the status said "Item waiting to be pulled" even if the item was checked out which didn't make sense to us.  We've since learned that the status will say "Pending" in a future update which is satisfactory for now.

The Implementation committees are getting used to Google Apps.  By the end of next week, all of the committees except Acquisitions will have met with Daniel Sweeney for at least one development call--some more than once!  We have over 50 people involved in this process which is a lot to coordinate.

Heidi and I are working on how we will set up the test database to simulate things here at SCLS as much as possible.  My biggest worry is how we will handle our 4740 collection codes!  But, I think Heidi has a lot more to worry about as circulation rules are incredibly complex.

Here's What People are Saying About Koha--Migration Report: Week 3 (May 11-15)

Last week the LINK Implementation committees received basic training on Koha.  Here is what committee members have been saying about Koha.

"I really liked being able to have two tabs open at once so that you could be working on something and then flip over to check out without having to finish the other thing (like updating a patron record) first."  (Brinnan Shaffer/SCLS Delivery).

"The sharing of saved reports will be helpful.  I also like the ability to create new reports." (Carla Di Iorio/Madison)

"I like the ability to create lists in the Catalog, which might finally give us a chance to create a separate list of new materials for the fans of classical music, who currently have to wade through all the other genres to find the five-ten classical titles we add every month." (Dennis Reynolds/Madison)

"I like how we will be able to see a list of the 50 most recently checked out items for a patron. Right now the only way to look at a previous item is if it was overdue or had a problem." (Katie Brenner/Waunakee)

"If you make a juvenile account and the "guarantor" (guardian in Dynix language) has an account you can click on the parent's name from within the child's account to get to the parent's account.  That's handy." (Annie Busta and Jeff Kauffeld / Madison)

"I really liked being able to run my own reports and the saved reports share." (Tracy Herald / Sun Prairie)

"I like the ability to write notes to patrons that they will see when they check their accounts from home." (Emily Harkins / Waunakee)

"I felt like I was shopping the Amazon or Barnes & Noble websites, but I knew I wasn't going to have to get out the credit card.  Our patrons are going to love the new look and the user-friendly feel to the PAC.  Searching felt much easier and more intuitive than what we currently have. We may have to increase our hold shelves to accommodate all of the "new" people placing holds.  I had to leave the training just as they were getting into tagging, but that sure looked like another great feature." (Maureen Palmer / Plain)

"I really liked the way Reports looked. I realize that reports development is not our top priority but I was impressed that it looked pretty flexible." (Susan Lee / Madison)

"As for cataloging:  I liked the fact that it seems like creating templates like our BSE templates is very doable.  I also like the fact that one can un-import bib records if one realizes they made a mistake quickly. And I like the fact that we can have macros in cataloging." (Jan Anderson / Madison)

"I liked that patrons can set up RSS feeds of their searches so they are automatically notified when new items are added that they're interested in.  I see lots of fun possibilities for the public lists that staff can create. "Great Gardening Books at Our Library." "Meadowridge Staff Favorites." "Meadowridge Past Picks of the Week." I will need to restrain myself. FRBRization! It will rock to have all other formats and editions of a work easily accessible through one search." (Kathy Wolkoff / Madison)

KohaCon, Twitter and the meaning of life

[This article was originally posted on the LINK Update blog on April 20, 2009]

Last week Heidi Oliversen and I had the opportunity to go to KohaCon 2009 in Plano, TX which was the second International KohaCon.  The first was held in 2006 in France.  KohaCon is a meeting of Koha users and Koha developers.  Heidi and I learned a lot at this conference that will help us through our Koha implementation and migration.  But more importantly for me, I gained more insight into what it means to be a part of the Koha community.  Being a part of this community means coming together with others who have the same enthusiasm for Koha and who wish to work together to improve Koha.  Yes, we did learn about problems with Koha--but we also learned that there are people who want to fix those problems.

About 3/4 of the way through the conference, someone showed me the Twitter feed for the conference.  People at the conference were posting comments to Twitter (or "tweeting") throughout the conference.  You can literally track the programs by following the feed.  Here is a link to the Kohacon Twitter feed: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=kohacon09.  You don't have to have a Twitter account to read this.

When I returned from the conference, I continued to track the feed.  I did this because the developers were having a post conference "hackfest."  The developer's spent all weekend talking about Koha development and doing bug fixes. While they were doing this, they were posting updates to Twitter.  It was an amazing experience to watch the Twitter feed.  Here was a group of people from around the world--including the creator of Koha as well as people who were brand new to programming on Koha--who spent an entire weekend working on bug fixes.  And they did this just because they like to do it. This is what Open Source is all about folks.  And LINK is fortunate to be a part of it.

OK, so I haven't really discovered the meaning of life.  But I have discovered what it means to be a librarian in a web 2.0 world.  It means that a group of people can sit in a conference room at the Holiday Inn Express in Plano, TX writing bug patches to an ILS and a bunch of other people can see what they are doing by watching a Twitter feed.  Pretty darn awesome if you ask me.

Migration Report: Week 2 (5/4-5/8)

Our module Implementation Committees are all in place.    Next week we will receive basic module training from LibLime's Debra Denault.  We had the first of our "bi-weekly calls" this week.  We discussed the implementation committees and how LibLime will be communicating with them.  They will use Google docs for sharing information.

The first projects that we will be working on are:

• Cataloging: The ability to Cut, Copy and Paste fields and subfields in biblios.
• Cataloging: Moving an item from one bib to another along with all affiliated transactions. 
• Circulation: Add a free-text information note in the patron record that does not display in checkout or on the patron's record in the PAC. (This is similar to current Field 24 on the Dynix patron record.)
• Circulation: The ability to add up to 4000 characters worth of additional information in a block or note on the patron record. (Similar to "Add message" in PURF on the Dynix patron record but much more room to add information.)
• PAC: Display the status of holds in the PAC.
• PAC: Showing patrons their hold priority in the PAC (i.e. their place in the hold queue).
• PAC: Display the number of holds per bib in the PAC. 
• Serials: Store default item codes in Subscription Records which will be applied to item record as the issue is checked in.
• System Administration: The ability to key in a barcode using only significant digits (without the prefix).

These projects were picked because they are relatively straight-forward and will allow us to get our feet wet with the development process.

Migration Report: Week 1

The week started for the LINK Automation staff with two migration "kickoff" calls with LibLime. We were introduced to our LibLime migration team and learned that we will be using Google docs to share information.  Debra Denault, Beverly Church and Mary Moules will be leading us through the migration. We will be holding bi-weekly progress calls with them.

Our migration will have two main phases. The first will be the software development phase. We will be working with Daniel Sweeney who will be writing the specifications for our development projects. Galen Charlton is in charge of the team who will be doing the software development. We will be working on 6 to 10 development projects at a time. The LINK Implementation Committees will be closely involved in the development process.  We have identified our first development projects and hope to get started on them soon.

The second phase will be the data migration. This will overlap somewhat with the development phase.

We have our first on-site training days scheduled. The purpose of these training days is to orient the Automation staff and Implementation Committee members to the Koha software. Knowing how the software works will help us as we develop specifications for our software development projects.

April 30 was the last day for LINK libraries to submit staff to work on the module Implementation Committees. We are finalizing the placement of staff on each of the committees. We hope to send out an an announcement on Monday about the committees.

And finally this week we launched the link2koha blog.  But if you are reading this, you know that already!