Koha Newsletter: Volume 2/Issue 1: January 2011

Posted on Posted in Koha Newsletter

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 2, Issue 1: January 2011

Table of Contents

 

Koha Developments

RFC Roundup: Members/Patrons
by MJ Ray

The following Patrons management improvement ideas have Requests For Comments listed on the Koha Community Wiki. If you have suggestions you could make about these topics, please add comments to the relevant page by logging in and clicking the “Edit” tab at the top of the page. Alternatively, you could start a discussion on the email list or web forum.

  • Calculate fines in days debarred RFC
    • Koha 3.0 lets the library define fines in money only. Some libraries needs to be able to set “debarred” fines. When a patron returns books lately, he is debarred for some days.
  • Enhancements to debarred patron
    • Gonenoaddress, lost or debarred are currently just toggle choices. Enhancements proposed include adding a comment field to each choice and adding an expiry date for debarring.
  • Duplicate card button
    • This feature would add a new button to duplicate a patron card. A new form with the duplicated values will open up and when the librarian puts the cursor on a field, the value will be erased ready to write the new value. Then the librarian can save the new card.
  • Enhancements to the display of extended patron attributes in circ
    • This RFC proposes having some extended attributes display in circ/circulation.pl and jumping straight to the patron details page if there is only one match for a patron search.
  • Fines Tab
    • Redesign the fines tab to allow partial payment and record/show more information about fines, such as the librarian taking the fine, the transaction time and payment method.
  • Patron Reading record management RFC and Patron self-managing privacy RFC
    • The laws in some countries requires that the library cleans the reading record after some time. These new features would let the user himself decide what to do with the reading record. The current behaviour will be the initial default and changed through a system preference.

** Please Contribute! **

Please, if you have any feedback or encouragement for any of the above, follow the link and add comments, or start a discussion.

Koha 3.2.3 is now available
by Chris Nighswonger

It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.2.3.

The package can be retrieved from:

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.03.tar.gz

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

http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.03.tar.gz.MD5
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.03.tar.gz.MD5.asc
http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.02.03.tar.gz.sig

Release notes for 3.2.3 are below the fold.

Come and get it! Read more.

 

Koha Libraries

7 Public Libraries in Pampanga Receive Koha Computers
by Pampanga PIO

City of San Fernando – The National Library of the Philippines (NLP) turned over seven Koha computer units to seven public libraries in the province in ceremonies held recently at the Pampanga Provincial Library. Read More.

National Folk Archive in the UK Launches Online Catalog
by Elaine Bradtke

The first collection of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library catalogue has been launched into cyberspace: http://catalogue.efdss.org. More on this story can be found on WorldCentralMusic.org.

 

Koha Events

OS Academy a big success for Koha
by Chris Cormack

Over the last 2 weeks Catalyst has been running a pilot of an ‘Academy’ for high school age students.  I was very happy to be a part of what, in my opinion, turned out to be a very well run and most worthwhile exercise. During the first week the students were treated to tutorial sessions, including installing ubuntu on their laptops, using git, perl, php, postgresql, configuring a server, copyright, licenses, freedom, community, graphics (inkscape & the gimp), html css and javascript. Quite a list now I see it all written down. Read More.

KUDOS Conference in May
by David Schuster

Put May 2 and 3, 2011 on your calendars for the KUDOS conference to be held in Madison, Wisconsin we are finalizing the venue.  More information on transportation and housing to come.  This will be a conference for and by users of Koha in collaboration with vendors that support or interact with Koha.  We are hopeful that this conference will be a low cost/no cost option with the help of sponsorships from vendors and libraries.

We are looking for volunteers to serve on the planning and program committees. If you are interested in helping out, please let me know.  We need to get to work on this right away!

This is NOT going to be a KohaCon and at this time no Hackfest is being organized.

 

 

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

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