Koha Newsletter: Volume 2/Issue 3: March 2011

Posted on Posted in Koha Newsletter

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 2, Issue 3: March 2011

Table of Contents

 

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.

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