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.

Table of Contents

• Koha Developments
  • Koha 3.2.10 Available
  • Koha 3.4.2 Coming Soon
• Koha Community
  • Koha website: Announcing the Comments Policy
  • What Colour Am I?
  • Wiki Open For Contributors Again
• Koha Events
  • Global Sign Off Day 15.06.2011
  • Symposium Koha – Lyon (France) 2011
  • Koha General Meeting: 6 July 2011

Koha Developments

Koha 3.2.10 Available
by Chris Nighswonger

Note: This is potentially the final release of the 3.2.x branch. Please act accordingly with new implementations and upgrades.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.10.tar.gz

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

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.10.tar.gz.MD5

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.10.tar.gz.MD5.asc

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.10.tar.gz.sig

Come and get it! Read More.

Koha 3.4.2 Coming Soon
by Chris Nighswonger

The monthly 3.4.x release is a few days behind schedule. As of 0000 UTC 20 June 2011, 3.4.x is in a string freeze. 27 June 2011 will be the date of the 3.4.2 release. At this point the only patches that touch strings which will be accepted are blocker and security fixes. Non-string patches will still be applied up to the date of the release.

Koha Community

Koha website: Announcing the Comments Policy
by MJ Ray

The Koha website now has a comments policy. The policy is described at http://koha-community.org/about/comments-policy/ It basically summarises the recent practice and adds a suggestion that people should appeal to a general meeting if there is a dispute.

What Colour Am I?
by Brooke Johnson

Chris Cormack world renowned SLS strikes again. This time, he brought us a very cool bug visualisation.

http://bugs.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/bug_status.pl

We know we’re well behind on signoffs if we’re in the red. As I wrote this, thanks to Global Sign Off Day, I’m looking at a glorious yellow 46.

It was wonderful to watch how motivational this was. Developers threw down just to get the colour to change and the number to decrease.

Wouldn’t this be neat as a widget?

Wiki Open For Contributors Again
by MJ Ray

The Koha wiki is one of the simplest places for users to collaborate on documentation about Koha, how to use it, how it’s been used and a lot of other topics.

The wiki can send out email again now, which means that new contributors can register and actually validate their email address, which means they can edit pages.

If you registered during the recent problems, please visit http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Special:Preferences to log in and request a new validation email.

If you would like to register, please visit http://wiki.koha-community.org/w/index.php?title=Special:OpenIDLogin with your social media account from WordPress, Livejournal, Yahoo, Google or any other OpenID-enabled site, or http://wiki.koha-community.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&type=signup to register with an email address.

Please help us improve the documentation by registering with the wiki and editing some pages.

Koha Events

Global Sign Off Day 15.06.2011
by Brooke Johnson

How great are our developers? Wonderful, of course! Magnus Enger, Katrin Fischer, and Chris Cormack proved once again that cool things happen on IRC!

07:36 magnuse maybe we should declare a global signing off day before summer?
(drawn from http://stats.workbuffer.org/irclog/koha/2011-06-07)

and just days later, it happened. 22 lovely bug contestants were sent on through to the next stage, including a critical and a major. Alas, 7 failed QA, but they’ll be back for our second chance round after a retool.

For a blow by blow description, visit the wiki: http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Global_sign_off_day,_2011-06-15

We couldn’t have done this without everyone’s help. Thank you all. This is a great example of just how quickly things can progress when folks get together and roll up their sleeves.

Nau te rourou, naku te rourou, ka ora ai te tangata.

Symposium Koha – Lyon (France) 2011
by Pascale Nalon, president of KohaLa association

University libraries of Lyon 2, Lyon 3 and Saint-Etienne (together representing approximately 80,000 students and 900,000 items) have switched from their proprietary software to Koha in 2010-2011. In this context of re-computerization, the third Koha symposium was organized by University Lyon 2 for May 26 and 27.

During the two days, 130 participants from public or private libraries joined conferences about open source and open data, the history of Koha, the experience of Inter-Universities, cooperation for implementation of Koha in libraries, work reorganization and other workshops (Birt and JasperReports, SQL, XSLT, install party).

These conferences and workshops hosted by french companies providing services around Koha and other softwares (Progilone, Tamil and Biblibre) and some librarians of different institutions. Students of “CoLibre”, bachelor of communication and open source software, participated to the organisation.

The new thing about this symposium, was the presence of open source exhibitors (free music, associations promoting Open Source and enterprises).

Articles, videos and podcasts are available online.

Koha General Meeting: 6 July 2011
by MJ Ray

There will be a general meeting in the #koha IRC channel (IRC server irc.oftc.net) on 6 July 2011 at 10:00 UTC+0. As well as discussing the future development of the Koha software, it will also consider when to end free support for the 3.2 version (it will remain available, but no new releases will be made) and discuss the Koha Conferences.

You can read the agenda and register your intentions or apologies at http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_6_July_2011.

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

Please send future story ideas to

Table of Contents

• Koha Developments
  • Koha 3.2.9 Available
  • Koha 3.4.1 Available
• Koha Community
  • Farmington Sponsors Facebook/Twitter Share Development
  • Standards Organisation of Nigeria implements Koha supported by Projektlink Konsult Ltd.
  • University of Guyana Chooses Koha
• Koha Tips & Tricks
  • Increase Koha Performance
  • Configure Automatic Receipt Printing

Koha Developments

Koha 3.2.9 Available
by Chris Nighswonger

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.09.tar.gz

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

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.09.tar.gz.MD5

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.09.tar.gz.MD5.asc

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.09.tar.gz.sig

Come and get it, quick! Read More

Koha 3.4.1 Available
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.4.1.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.01.tar.gz

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

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.01.tar.gz.MD5

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.01.tar.gz.MD5.asc

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.01.tar.gz.sig

Come and get it! Read More

Koha Community

Farmington Sponsors Facebook/Twitter Share Development
by Hall Bright

ByWater Solutions has provided a Facebook and Twitter application for the Farmington Libraries to allow patrons to tweet and facebook what they are reading. When you go into the details VIEW of an item, the patron sees the Facebook and Twitter icons on the right menu where a Hold is placed. See: http://catalog.farmingtonlibraries.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=161062

By clicking the Facebook “Like” button, a patron is prompted to log in to Facebook. Then, a patron can write commentary or such and the commentary and the title [with a link to the catalog] appears on their Wall. The library’s address also appears.

The Twitter “Tweet” button also prompts a log in screen and then brings up a customizable message with an automatically generated TinyURL type link back to the catalog.

We are still in testing, but we are excited for this customization.

Standards Organisation of Nigeria implements Koha supported by Projektlink Konsult Ltd.
by Olugbenga Adara

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) Library, established in 1971, has adopted Koha for managing it’s library collections.

The SON library has the responsibility to assemble and maintain a collection of standards, normative documents, books and other relevant materials it considers appropriate and relevant for a standards management in Nigeria.

The implementation was carried out in conjunction with Projectlink Konsult Limited (PKL) Full details can be found online.

University of Guyana Chooses Koha
by Sekhar Mallampati

University of Guyana (uog.edu.gy), Berbice Campus (South America) has launched it’s Library Automation System Koha on 12th May, 2011. The collection size is around 13000. We are also working on implementing Koha for University’s main campus (Turkeyen) Library which has a collection size of 140000.

This is first of it’s kind in the country (Guyana). University of Guyana is the first one to implement this world’s leading Open Source Library Software (Koha) in the Caribbean.

We have started helping the National Library of Guyana to start their journey with Koha.

University of Guyana, Berbice Campus Library’s “Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC)” service can be accessed at: http://ugbclibrary.uog.edu.gy

Dept. of Software Services has provided technical support for University of Guyana automation project. I am a software engineer and HOD for Dept. of Software Services, University of Guyana.

We want to thank you all for this feature-rich product. We have been benefiting from the mailing lists, etc.

Koha Tips & Tricks

Increase Koha Performance
by Fridolyn SOMERS

Here is a little technical trick :

In koha-conf.xml, the address of the database server is stored :

<hostname>__DB_HOST__</hostname>

If you use its host name (mysql.mydomaine.com for example), the DNS will be used for each database connection.

Using the IP address will pass-by DNS and may increase a little bit the Koha server performance.

Configure Automatic Receipt Printing
by Koha Community

Did you know that you can set Koha to automatically print receipts for circulation? There is a guide on the wiki that will walk you through the process with different printers and browsers. Learn more on the Koha wiki.

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

Please send future story ideas to

Special Issue Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Koha 3.4
  • Koha 3.4 Released
  • Koha 3.4 Statistics
  • Koha 3.4 Documentation
  • Koha 3.4 Release Notes

Introduction
by Nicole C. Engard

In honor of the timely release of Koha 3.4 and the amazing community who made it happen this issue of the Koha Newsletter will focus on the release. The following articles will provide you with all of the information you’ll need to learn about Koha 3.4.

Koha 3.4

Koha 3.4 Released
by Chris Cormack

Kia ora tatou

The Koha development team is happy to announce the release of Koha 3.4.0.

Koha 3.4.0 is a major feature release that contains major changes to underlying architecture (adoption of Template::Toolkit for templating) and performance enhancements (removal of item data from biblio records).

These changes, in addition to the inclusion of many new features, mean a lot of new strings for translators to translate.

For these reasons we recommend that people who are already running Koha inproduction delay their upgrade until 3.4.1, due May 22, to give the translators time to finish, and for the removing of item data to be streamlined. If you do wish to upgrade please make sure you read the UPGRADE section of the INSTALL document.

The development team would like to thank all the people who have made this release possible. Please take time to read the release notes.

Koha 3.4 Statistics
by Chris Cormack, edited by Nicole C. Engad

Editor’s Note: In the interest of being brief, the following article only shows the top 10 of results for most of the statistics categories included. Full statistics can be found at: http://blog.bigballofwax.co.nz/2011/04/23/some-statistics-for-koha-3-4-0/.

Koha 3.4 Documentation
by Nicole C. Engard

The manual for Koha 3.4 is (as always) a work in progress. Throughout the six month development cycle, I have been updating the manual so that when Koha 3.4 was released the manual for that release was as up to date as possible. As always, contributions to the documentation are welcome. Community members can access the manual in its own git repository at: http://git.koha-community.org/gitweb/?p=kohadocs.git;a=summary.

At this time the Koha 3.4 manual is only available in English. If you would like to translate the manual in to your native language please contact me and I’ll get you set up with a folder for your own language files.

Koha 3.4 Release Notes
by Chris Cormack and Koha Community

Koha is the first free and open source software library automation package
(ILS). Development is sponsored by libraries of varying types and sizes,
volunteers, and support companies from around the world.
The website for the Koha project is 

http://koha-community.org/

Koha 3.4.0 is released in memoriam of Elizabeth Mae Gallagher-Mitchell
December 20, 2010 - March 10, 2011.
Haere. Mōu tai ata; mōku tai ahiahi 

Koha 3.4.0 can be downloaded from:

    http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.00.tar.gz

Installation instructions can be found at:

http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Installation_Documentation

    OR in the INSTALL files that come in the tarball

Koha 3.4.0 is a major feature release.

New features in 3.4.0
======================

  ACQUISITIONS:
    * Can filter budgets by active status and date on the acquisitions
      homepage
    * Freetext field added to specify one-off delivery addresses/comments
    * Can create multiple orders from a staged MARC file
    * New cronjob to delete old suggestions
    * Warning when ordering from an external source when a catalogue
      record already exists
    * Currency can be set when ordering

  ADMINISTRATION
    * Many additional granular permissions are added
    * Ability to replace the favicon from within the admin interface
    * Ability to import and export MARC frameworks
    * Separate field for library state/province
    * WYSIWYG editor for Koha News
    * Ability to add news items to slips
    * Label batch edit interface allows entry of items by scanning
      barcodes
    * Can choose the MARC framework when importing records

  CATALOGING
    * NORMARC support added
    * Edits to Authority records are now logged
    * 005 field updated when a Biblio or Authority record is edited
    * Added edit record/edit items to the search result if logged in
      user has cataloguing privileges
    * Add support of record linking by record control number in $w
    * 006/008 plugins much improved

  CIRCULATION
    * Callnumbers are displayed when an item is checked in
    * Waiting holds now show the date they were marked waiting
    * Show guarantees checkouts when checking out to a guarantor and vice versa
    * Show holds waiting for a patron on check in
    * New report wizard for Holds
    * Syspref to disable the ability for borrowers to choose their
      pickup library for holds
    * Self Checkout supports login
    * Ability to set 'hard' due dates, which will not allow items to
      be checked out past that
    * Printed receipts can now include the library phone, address and
      other fields
    * Fast Add framework at circulation
    * Ability to define due dates in the past
    * Checkin page now lists fines owed by patron
    * Preferences for defining the fine level when a staff
      override is needed
    * Search to Hold feature

  OPAC
    * New system preference added to allow the librarians to hide
      items from the OPAC.  See docs/opac/OpacHiddenItems.txt for
      more information.
    * Authority display improved in OPAC
    * Allow the patron to choose which library they wish to make a
      purchase suggestion for
    * Added the ability to hide the name of a reviewer/commenter in
      the OPAC
    * CSS/HTML and other UI improvements
    * Lists respect the XSLT bibliograhic display preferences
    * Truncation of facets now controllable by a system preference
    * Can use 856$u to store an image URI which Koha can then display in the OPAC
    * User can renew multiple items at once
    * A new librarian-controlled column added to the 'My Summary' page on the OPAC
    * Recent comments view for the OPAC (allow users to see recently reviewed items)
    * Feature to make the OPAC private (allow only logged in users to search/view items)
    * Ability to edit what displays when no results are found
    * Privacy feature allowing the user to specify when their reading
      (or circulation) records are anonymised
    * opacstylesheet can link to a url anywhere, not just a local file

  PATRONS
    * Separate field for state/province
    * Ability to duplicate a Patron
    * Print overdue and hold notices for patrons without email addresses

  REPORTS
    * Run a report immediately after creation
    * The list of saved reports has pagination and can be sorted
    * SQL formatting improvements when viewing a report
    * Parameters can be set in guided reports

  SEARCHING
    * NoZebra mode is officially deprecated.
    * Added shelf location to the indexes
    * Added a search link for analytics to serial records
    * Subjects can now search complete subfields
    * MARC21 tag 751 (geographical entry) is now searchable
    * UNIMARC EAN/UPC/Music fields added to the indices
    * usecontrolnumber syspref allows you to link the 78X fields to
      other names of the same serial

  SERIALS
    * 50 bugs fixed in serials management 5508

  STAFF INTERFACE
    * Enumchron added to the biblio detail page
    * Improvements to suggestion management
    * Can use 856$u to store an image URI which Koha can then display in
      the staff interface.
    * Cart is emptied when a user logs out
    * IntranetUserCSS preference added to allow styling of staff interface

  INTERFACE
    * New icon set for itemtypes (Nimes)
    * LibLime kids iconset resized to consistent size
    * Seshat itemtype iconset added (Naropa College)
    * CSS classes added to the XSLT results to enable styling

  INTERNATIONALIZTION
    * New initialization SQL files for Norwegian

  INTERNALS, PACKAGING AND PERFORMANCE
    * Koha now uses Template::Toolkit rather than HTML::Template::Pro
    * Improvements to test case coverage
    * .packages file for Ubuntu Maverick
    * Testing using Test::Perl::Critic
    * CGI::Session can now be stored in Memcached
    * mod_deflate added to save bandwidth
    * Move items out of biblioitems

  COMMAND LINE UTILITIES
    * Script to update all items and biblio
    * Script to set and get system preferences from the command line

  BUGFIXES
    * Approximately 633 tracked bugs and enhancement requests
      are addressed in this release

System Preferences
======================

The following system preferences are new in 3.4.0:

    * AllFinesNeedOverride
    * AllowFineOverride
    * AllowPurchaseSuggestionBranchChoice
    * AllowSelfCheckReturns
    * AlternateHoldingsField
    * AlternateHoldingsSeparator
    * AuthoritiesLog
    * COinSinOPACResults
    * Display856uAsImage
    * displayFacetCount
    * FacetLabelTruncationLength
    * FineNotifyAtCheckin
    * HoldNotifyAtCheckin
    * IntranetFavicon
    * IntranetUserCSS
    * itemBarcodeInputFilter
    * maxItemsInSearchResults
    * maxRecordsForFacets
    * OPACAllowUserToChooseBranch
    * OPACDisplay856uAsImage
    * OpacFavicon
    * OpacHiddenItems
    * OPACMySummaryHTML
    * OPACNoResultsFound
    * OpacPrivacy
    * OpacPublic
    * SelfCheckHelpMessage
    * SelfCheckTimeout
    * ShowReviewer
    * StaffAuthorisedValueImages
    * TraceCompleteSubfields
    * TraceSubjectSubdivisions
    * UseAuthoritiesForTracings
    * UseControlNumber
    * UseTablesortForCirc
    * WaitingNotifyAtCheckin

System requirements
======================

    Changes since 3.2:

    * Template::Toolkit

Documentation
======================

As of Koha 3.2, the Koha manual is now maintained in DocBook.  The
home page for Koha documentation is 

http://koha-community.org/documentation/

As of the date of these release notes, only the english version of the
Koha manual is available:

http://koha-community.org/documentation/3-4-manual/

The Git repository for the Koha manual can be found at

http://git.koha-community.org/gitweb/?p=kohadocs.git;a=summary

Translations
======================

Complete or near-complete translations of the OPAC and staff
interface are available in this release for the following languages:

  * Chinese
  * Danish
  * English (New Zealand)
  * English (USA)
  * French (France)
  * French (Canada)
  * German
  * Greek
  * Hindi
  * Italian
  * Norwegian
  * Portuguese
  * Spanish
  * Turkish

Partial translations are available for various other languages.

The Koha team welcomes additional translations; please see

http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Translating_Koha

for information about translating Koha, and join the koha-translate
list to volunteer:

http://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/koha-translate

The most up-to-date translations can be found at:

http://translate.koha-community.org/

Release Team
======================

The release team for Koha 3.4 is

Release Manager:        Chris Cormack <chrisc@catalyst.net.nz>
Documentation Manager:  Nicole C Engard <nengard@gmail.com>
Translation Manager:    Frédéric Demians <frederic@tamil.fr>
Release Maintainer (3.2.x):
                        Chris Nighswonger <cnighswonger@foundations.edu>
Release Maintainer (3.4.x):
                        Chris Nighswonger <cnighswonger@foundations.edu>
QA Manager:             Colin Campbell

Credits
======================

We thank the following libraries who are known to have sponsored
new features in Koha 3.4:

  * Aix-Marseille University, France
  * East Brunswick Public Library, USA
  * Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
  * Goddard College, USA
  * Hauraki District Council, New Zealand
  * Horowhenua Library Trust, New Zealand
  * La Trappe Monastery, France
  * Los Gatos Public Library, USA
  * Lyon3 University, France
  * Marlboro College, USA
  * MassCat, USA
  * Merrill Memorial Library, Maine, USA
  * Middletown Township Public Library, USA
  * Ministry of Culture, Spanish Government, Spain
  * Naropa College, USA
  * Nelsonville Public Library, USA
  * Nimes, France
  * Regionbibliotek Halland, Sweden
  * Rijksmuseum Research Library, Netherlands
  * SAN Ouest Provence, France
  * SAR, USA
  * St Etienne University, France
  * VOKAL, USA

We thank the following individuals who contributed patches to
Koha 3.4.0. 

  * Alex Arnaud
  * Amit Gupta
  * Andrew Elwell
  * Bernardo Gonzalez Kriegel
  * Brian Engard
  * Brice Sanchez
  * Chris Cormack
  * Chris Nighswonger
  * Christophe Croullebois
  * Christopher Hall
  * Cindy Murdock Ames
  * Claudia
  * Colin Campbell
  * D Ruth Bavousett
  * Daniel Grobani
  * David Schuster
  * Dobrica Pavlinusic
  * Doug Dearden
  * Edward Allen
  * Frédéric Demians
  * Frédérick Capovilla
  * Frère Sébastien Marie
  * Galen Charlton
  * Garry Collum
  * Henri-Damien LAURENT
  * Ian Walls
  * Jane Wagner
  * Janusz Kaczmarek
  * Jared Camins-Esakov
  * Jean-André Santoni
  * Jerome Charaoui
  * Jesse Weaver
  * Joe Atzberger
  * Johnboy
  * Jonathan Druart
  * Julian Maurice
  * Katrin Fischer
  * Koustubha Kale
  * Lars Wirzenius
  * Liz Rea
  * Magnus Enger
  * Marcel de Rooy
  * Mark Gavillet
  * Mason James
  * Matthew Hunt
  * Matthias Meusburger
  * MJ Ray
  * Nahuel ANGELINETTI
  * Nate Curulla
  * Nicolas Morin
  * Nicole C. Engard
  * Owen Leonard
  * Paul Poulain
  * Reed Wade
  * Ricardo Dias Marques
  * Robin Sheat
  * Salvador Zaragoza Rubio
  * Savitra Sirohi
  * Serhij Dubyk {Сергій Дубик}
  * Sophie Meynieux
  * Spartaness
  * Srdjan Jankovic
  * Stéphane Delaune
  * Tomas Cohen Arazi
  * Will Stokes
  * Zach Sim
  * Zeno Tajoli

We regret any omissions.  If a contributor has been inadvertantly missed,
please send a patch against these release notes to
koha-patches@lists.koha-community.org.

Revision control notes
======================

The Koha project uses Git for version control.  The current development
version of Koha can be retrieved by checking out the master branch of 

    git://git.koha-community.org/koha.git

The branch for Koha 3.4.x (i.e., this version of Koha and future bugfix
releases) is 3.4.x.

The next major feature release of Koha will be Koha 3.6.0.

Bugs and feature requests
======================

Bug reports and feature requests can be filed at the Koha bug
tracker at

http://bugs.koha-community.org/

Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini

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

Please send future story ideas to

Table of Contents

• Koha Developments
  • Koha 3.2.6 Available
  • Date Format Tips
• Koha Community
  • Unsung Heroes : Olwen Williams
  • National Library brings ‘Koha’ to Pangasinan
• Koha Events
  • Koha Hacking in France
  • KohaCon 2011 Announcements
  • KudosCon Announcements

Koha Developments

Koha 3.2.6 Available
by Chris Nighswonger

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.06.tar.gz

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

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.06.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.06.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.06.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.2.6 are below the fold.

Learn more on the official site.

Date Format Tips
by Fridolyn SOMERS

The date format in Koha is set by system preference “dateformat” :

iso : year-month-day
metric : day/month/year
us : month/day/year

This syspref is passed to all templates by Auth.pm via two variables (ie “us” date format) :
dateformat = “us”
dateformat_us = 1

To display the wanted date format to user in a page, use the include “date-format.inc”.
It uses the above variables to render :

iso : (YYYY-MM-DD)
metric : (DD/MM/YYYY)
us : (MM/DD/YYYY)

Note that this include is translated.
ie in French : (JJ/MM/AAAA).

You may use the C4::Dates module :
ie get today date :

my $today C4::Dates->new();

To get date formatted in ISO :
my $message = ‘We are the ‘.$today->output(‘iso’);

To get date formatted according to current date format :
my $message = ‘We are the ‘.$today->output();

Remember that dates are stored in ISO in database.
So query results will contain ISO formatted dates.

Use “C4::Dates::format_date” to convert from ISO to current date format.
Use “C4::Dates::format_date_in_iso” to convert from current date format to ISO.

An interesting trick :
The ISO format – because of the order of year, month and day – authorizes a string-comparison of two dates :
ie :
“2011-03-10″ gt “2011-03-09″ (day comparison)
“2011-04-02″ gt “2011-03-09″ (day and month comparison)
“2012-01-01″ gt “2011-03-09″ (day,month and year comparison)

Koha Community

Unsung Heroes : Olwen Williams
by Chris Cormack

When I was working on the Koha history doc leading up to the presentation at Kohacon I noticed that there were some contributions that I would like to make special mention of. This of course is not to try and rank anyones contribution over anyone else’s or to detract from the already well recognised contributors. But there are some people who made significant contributions to Koha and I would like to recognise that.

Olwen Williams is a huge reason why Koha exists, without her and her knowledge of pick based systems we might still be struggling to get the data out of the old library system She enabled Horowhenua Library Trust to feel confident, by getting the data out of their old system and getting it into the new relational database. Not content to stop there, she also wrote a significant amount of the code that was to become Koha 1.0. She was the second person ever to commit code to Koha and occasionally still answers a question on the mailing list.

Olwen if you read this, hats off to you and thank you very much for all the hard work you put in.

National Library brings ‘Koha’ to Pangasinan
by Eva Visperas

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan, Philippines – Thirty-four public libraries in this province each received a complete unit of the Integrated Library System from the National Library of the Philippines.

Edgardo Quiros, chief of the Information Technology Division of the National Library, told The STAR that Pangasinan is the sixth province-recipient of this project after Cavite, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, La Union and Benguet. Next would be Bohol, Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental.

The project, named Koha, from the Maori (New Zealand) word meaning to give, is an open source integrated library system developed by New Zealand that was successful and eventually shared to the world.

The project was first implemented by the National Library in 1996 and 2000, and the present distribution has incorporated changes in the system brought by changes in technology, according to Quiros.

Read more.

Koha Events

Koha Hacking in France
by Paul Poulain

At the beginning of April, more than 20 Koha developers will have a week of hard work on Koha in France, Marseille (at BibLibre office). They come from many countries from Europe: Spain (4), Germany (1), Norway (1), UK (2), and of course France (all BibLibre, that’s 9 developers + 3 librarians, but not only: 3 frenchies not from BibLibre are also coming)

During this week, we will work on testing/patching new features and bugfixes that are still waiting for 3.4, but also work on documentation and translation.

I also hope that will be a good opportunity for us to share our experiences, speak of our future projects,… If anyone want to join us, it’s still possible, the first limit we will reach is the bandwidth one probably, drop a mail to paul.poulain@biblibre.com.

KohaCon 2011 in India
by Nicole C. Engard

Registration and the Call for Papers for KohaCon 2011 are open at the new official conference site. You can also subscribe to the conference mailing list through that site.

KudosCon Announcements
by David Schuster

The registration form for the KUDOScon2011 conference is available. This will be a no registration fee conference, held in Madison, WI on May 2 and 3, 2011. We are asking that people register for the conference as we are limited in attendance. Please do not register if you do not plan on attending.

The Conference Planning Committee is finalizing the program. In addition to the regular program, there will be some fun ways for everyone to get involved with the conference. We will also have an evening sponsor reception at a local venue. Watch for more information on these soon.

For more details on Madison, the conference center and the program, see the KUDOScon2011 site. We have one block of hotel rooms available at a nearby hotel and we are working on getting more. If you would like to book now, here is the link. If you are a government employee, we have some great rates.

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

Please send future story ideas to