Koha Community Newsletter: February 2013
Koha Community Newsletter 
February 2013
Volume 4, Issue 2
ISSN 2153-8328
Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
Please submit news items to 
Table of Contents
- Koha Development
- Koha Community
- Upcoming Koha Events
- Past Koha Events
Koha Development
Koha 3.10.3 Released
by Chris Cormack
The Koha release team, in association with the many developers and users who have had input, are happy to announce the release of Koha version 3.10.3.
This is a bugfix/maintenance release and is the latest stable release of the Koha 3.10.x series.
Koha 3.10.3 can be downloaded here; installation instructions are here or in the INSTALL files that come in the tarball.
Release notes are here.
Koha 3.8.10 Released
by Chris Cormack
The Koha release team, in association with the many developers and users who have had input, are happy to announce the release of Koha version 3.8.10.
This is a bugfix/maintenance release and is the latest stable release of the Koha 3.8.x series.
Koha 3.8.10 can be downloaded here; installation instructions are here or in the INSTALL files that come in the tarball.
Release notes are here.
Koha Statistics
Chris Cormack, Koha Community statistics wizard, has posted statistics for the Koha 3.10.1 release.
Koha 3.12 Timeline
by Jared Camins-Esakov
We are now less than three months out from the 3.12 release. In light of the implacable march of time, I wanted to provide an update on the release timeline for Koha 3.12. There are four important dates:
- March 15 – Feature slush. Any patch adding a new feature or enhancement which has not already been attached to a bug on Bugzilla (or submitted to Koha via git branch) will not be considered for inclusion in Koha 3.12.
- March 22 – Feature freeze. No further features or enhancements will be pushed. It will be bugfixes only from here on out. This will allow our Documentation Manager to revise the help files to reflect the features of 3.12 prior to the string freeze, below.
- May 1 – String freeze. No patch (other than security patches) changing translatable strings will be accepted for Koha 3.12.0.
- May 22. – Release. Koha 3.12.0 will be released and the 3.12 branch handed off to the 3.12 Release Maintainer. Depending on the preferences of the 3.14 RM, 3.12 may be branched on May 22, or 3.12 may be branched earlier
Reminder: we have a lot of patches that need attention from testers. As of now, 158 patches are waiting for sign off, and 116 patches are waiting for QA. Most are enhancements or new features, but there are also a bunch of bugfixes in there. Let’s try to get all the worthy patches we already have into 3.12!
Koha 3.14 Roles
Community members who would like to assume any of the roles for the Koha 3.14 release are welcome to add their name to the list of roles on the wiki and, optionally, add and link to a proposal.
Koha Support for Mozilla Persona
by Chris Cormack
I’m pleased to say you can now use Mozilla Persona to log into a Koha public interface. It works by matching the email address the borrower has set as their primary email with the user logged into Persona. Since applications like Drupal and Mahara also support Persona, you can implement a simple single sign on solution with very minimal effort. But the main win is we allow borrowers to login without needing to remember yet another username and password.
Koha Community
New Koha Libraries
Naval Marine Archive on Koha
We are pleased to announce that our library catalogue is now online. It currently contains over 20,000 books – all that remains to be done is to catalogue the remaining 15,000 books, 250,000 magazines and journals, 2,000 charts, several hundred paintings and engravings, and all the other documents, files, and manuscripts at “The Victory.”
Importantly, our Canadian archive is now formally accepted as an international library (CaOPIACS) and has access to major libraries for automatic retrieval (Z39.50) of their bibliographic records. Reciprocal use of our records by other libraries is planned in the near future.
This online library project has been achieved by an investment of about 1,400 hours of volunteer time into designing and implementing the system (including limited import of some of our spreadsheets), and continues with between 20 and 40 volunteer hours per week in cataloguing. In-house testing continues to make progress on the very complex matters surrounding efficient cataloguing of our periodicals; we tentatively plan on putting these fully on-line by mid-2013, but in the meanwhile all work stations in the library have access to this work-in-progress.
Technically, it involves a new 64-bit web server running a Linux operating system on our premises with enhanced internet connectivity. This has allowed us to develop a customized version of the Koha open-source library system.
Community Gossip
Catalyst Academy students have updated the Kiritaki Koha Android app.
Les traductions de la newsletter Koha Communautaire de décembre 2012 et janvier 2013 viennent d’être publiées sur Koha-fr.
KohaAloha reports that Marshall Breeding‘s list of 2013 ILS turnover shows a great deal of migration to Koha so far this year.
Nicole Engard, Koha Documentation Manager, has won an Opensource.com People’s Choice Award for her article “Should we require that open source is developed openly?”.
Koha Gruppo Italiano is a new Facebook group for the Italian Koha community.
Ruth Bavousett reports that she’s accepted a position outside the library community and will be leaving ByWater Solutions on March 8. She will continue to serve as Translation Manager for the rest of the 3.12 release cycle and intends to remain involved with Koha after that.
Elliott Davis reports that he, too, will be leaving ByWater Solutions, on March 18, and he intends to complete his term on the Quality Assurance team.
Vinod Kumar Mishra has released EasyKoha, a live DVD based on Koha 3.8.9 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
Support Provider News
BibLibre has posted a list of contributions to open source projects it made in 2012.
Chris Cormack and Don Christie of Catalyst IT will be talking about Koha at the Public Libraries Western Australia biennial conference.
Upcoming Koha Events
March General IRC Meeting
The March general IRC meeting will be held on 13 March 2013 at 18:00 UTC.
The agenda and other information is here.
Marseille Hackfest
by Pierre Vandekerckhove
The third HackFest Koha will take place in BibLibre‘s office in Marseille from 18 to 22 March. Here is a little overview of the program and the list of those who have already decided to come.
38 participants are registered: 18 staff members of BibLibre, 3 staff members of ByWater Solutions from the USA, 11 others from France, and one each from Germany, Italy, Croatia, Norway, and Portugal. The French participants will be coming from Aix Marseille Université, the BULAC, la Dracénie, the IEP, Lyon 2, Lyon 3, Mines Paristech, the BM of Nimes, Rennes 2, and the San Ouest Provence.
The program of these five days dedicated to Koha includes workshops about ergonomy, database, and search rewrite. Other workshop topics will be added, depending on the desires and ideas from the participants.
If you wish to come or just to ask a question about the HackFest, just email Paul Poulain.
To follow or discuss the event on Twitter, please use the hashtag #HFK13 (for HackFest Koha 2013).
Photos from the HackFest Koha 2012 are here.
Italian Koha Meeting
by Zeno Tajoli
The third Italian Koha meeting will be Friday 15 March from 14.00 to 17.00 at Bibliostar, the Italian libraries fair taking place in Milan, 14/15 March 2012. More info will be sent to the general Koha mailing list and to AIB-CUR, the main Italian mailing list for librarians. More Information on Bibliostar is here.
KohaCon13 Registration and Call for Speakers
by Nicole Engard
Registration for KohaCon13, the international users’ conference of the Koha open-source library system, is now open! KohaCon13 will be held October 16–22 at the Atlantis Casino Resort in Reno, Nevada, USA and registration is free!
Please consider joining us to learn about Koha, about the community, and about what libraries are doing with Koha around the world. Also consider sharing your story with us by speaking. The call for speakers is open and available here. Talks will range from introductory to advanced and will be geared toward Koha users, developers, and fans.
Learn more about KohaCon13 on the official conference site.
Past Koha Events
February General IRC Meeting
The February general IRC meeting was held on 7 February 2013.
The agenda, links to the minutes, and other information is here.