Koha Newsletter: Volume 3, Issue 1: January 2012

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Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328) Subscribe
Volume 3, Issue 1: January 2012

 

Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor.
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Table of Contents

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.

 

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