Koha Community Newsletter: July 2015
Koha Community Newsletter 
July 2015
Volume 6, Issue 7
ISSN 2153-8328
Edited by Chad Roseburg, Koha Community Newsletter Editor
Please submit news items to 
Table of Contents
- Development
- Community
- Upcoming Events
- Past Events
Development
Koha 3.20.2 Released
by Chris Cormack
The Koha release team are proud to announce the release of Koha
3.20.2. This release contains many bugfixes and 2 security fixes.
All users 3.20.x users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to this
version. As always the packages are in the repository or you can
download the tarball from download.koha-community.org
The full release notes are at
Koha 3.18.8 Released
by Liz Rea
The Koha release team are proud to announce the release of Koha
3.18.09. This release contains many bugfixes and 2 security fixes.
All 3.18.x users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to this
version. As always the packages are in the repository or you can
download the tarball from download.koha-community.org
Full release notes are here:
Koha 3.16.12 Released
by Mason James
The Koha release team are proud to announce the release of Koha
3.16.13. This release contains 1 enhancement and 43 bugfixes
All 3.16.x series users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to this version.
Please install from the tarball, as .deb packages are not currently built for the ‘oldoldstable’ series
More installation info…
The full release notes are at…
Elasticsearch is Ready for Testing
by Kathryn Tyree
Search is the most important and frequent action users perform when interacting with a Library Management System. If the search experience doesn’t keep up with what the modern user expects, people will go and find information somewhere else. Enter Elasticsearch…
As reported in this newsletter way back in April last year Elasticsearch is being implemented for Koha, as an alternative option to Zebra. This work is now ready to test, with the hope that it will be included in Koha v3.22. Further rigorous testing will be required by any library planning to start using it in production.
Once Elasticsearch is implemented, there are endless opportunities to enhance Koha by the way we use it, and develop on it. For example, notifying users about new matches for their saved searches – something libraries have been asking for, for a long time.
Robin Sheat, Developer, is using an open source project management tool, Taiga to keep track of his development to-do list, and note additional feature requests for the future. For now he’s trying hard to keep the scope contained so it can be tested in time for release in Koha 3.22 in November.
Many thanks to the following community members who have already been testing and discussing the development with Robin in Bugzilla: Katrin Fischer, Jonathan Druart, David Cook, Peter Zhao, Juan Romay Sieira.
To join the testing effort check out the bug and read the install guide if you want to run it yourself, or visit the test instance Robin is running at http://elasticsearch.koha.catalystdemo.net.nz/.
Many thanks to the organisations who have contributed funding to this development so far:
- The Italiano Gruppo
- AARome
- Arcadia Public Library
- ByWater Solutions
- Catalyst IT
Resources
http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Elasticsearch
http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=12478
https://tree.taiga.io/project/robins-koha-elasticsearch/kanban
http://git.catalyst.net.nz/gw?p=koha.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/elastic_search
Community
New Koha Libraries
- Follow links for the press releases!
- Royal College of Physicians of Ireland via Interleaf Technology
- The Respond! College (Ireland) via Interleaf Technology
- Southern Vermont College (USA) via ByWater Solutions
Koha in Germany
by Heinrech Hartl
The public library in Hanau-Grossauheim is now live on Koha.
About 27000 items were made available to the public by Trägerverein Bibliothek Großauheim e.V.
Until 31.12.2014 the library was run by the city of Hanau. Due to financial cutbacks the site was to be shut down. However it is open again to the public due to the efforts of Trägerverein Bibliothek Großauheim e. V.
The biblio and item records were transferred from a MAB2 based ILS (Libero) that was run by Stadtbibliothek Hanau to MARC21 based koha.
Community Gossip
Koha North America 2015
The following articles from ByWater Solutions cover the Koha North America conference.
- KohaNA 2015 Keynote
- KohaNA 2015 – Installing Koha
- KohaNA 2015 – Managing Koha MARC Frameworks
- KohaNA 2015 – Koha with RFID and SIP2
- KohaNA 2015 – Ed Veal on Community
- KohaNA 2015 – Koha Transport Cost Matrix
- KohaNA 2015 – Koha LDAP Implementation and Patron Imports
- KohaNA 2015 – Being a Part of the Koha Community
- KohaNA 2015 – Libki Integration
- KohaNA 2015 – Intro to SQL, Linux and Git for novices
Support Provider News
ByWater Solutions is looking for an Educator.
Upcoming Events
KohaCon 2015
Registration is now open!
They are also accepting presentation proposals – so Submit your talk!
Location:International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) lbadan, Nigeria
Dates: October 19 – 21
For more information, please see http://kohacon15.projektlinkkonsult.com/ .
KohaCon 2016 – Proposals
by Mirko Tietgen
From Koha Dev listserv
It was decided on the 5 August general IRC meeting that
1) bidding for Kohacon 2016 locations will end one week after the
August 2015 general IRC meeting. If you want to host Kohacon 2016,
add your proposal to the wiki[1] now and announce it on the general
mailing list, so people know about it.
No proposals will be accepted after 12 August 2015, 22 UTC.
Proposals so far:
– Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) to host Kohacon in
May or June 2016
– The Philippines (location tba.) to host Kohacon in September or
October 2016
You will find more details on the wiki page.
2) voting for the Kohacon 2016 location will start next general IRC
meeting, 9 September 2015, 10 UTC. It will be open for one week.
Everyone is allowed to vote, one vote per person. Your name and
email address will be required. Votes are secret, only people
involved in conducting the vote will be able to see them. Your data
is not used for anything beyond that, of course.
Past Events
Koha Seminar in Rome
by Romana Franziska Wallner
During the workshop “Free the librarians” – an event organized on July 14th by The American University of Rome in collaboration with the American Embassy in Rome –Stefano Bargioni (https://www.facebook.com/KohaGruppoItaliano) gave an one hour hands-on Koha demo. Almost none of the participants were Koha users. During the workshop an online access to a Koha demo provided by Hyperborea.com was given to each participant (Unimarc or MARC21, at their choice). Koha modules were presented and discussed, starting from Patron module, where participants defined a personal superlibrarian account. Special attention was given to cataloguing frameworks and system preferences. The session ended with a Q&A session about migration problems and the initial configuration of Koha.
July General IRC Meeting
The July general IRC meeting was held on the 8th at 10:00 UTC.
The agenda, links to the minutes, and other information is here.
August General IRC Meeting
The August general IRC meeting was held on the 5th at 20:00 UTC.
The agenda, links to the minutes, and other information is here.
Editor, Koha Community Newsletter