Koha Community Newsletter: April 2020

Koha Community Newsletter
April 2020

Volume 11, Issue 4
ISSN 2153-8328
Edited by Chad Roseburg, Koha Community Newsletter Editor

Please submit news items to Submit

Development
Community
Upcoming Events
Past Events

Development

Koha 19.11.05 Released

by Joy Nelson
The Koha community is proud to announce the release of Koha 19.11.05.

Koha 19.11.05 is a bugfix/maintenance release.

It includes 15 enhancements, 77 bugfixes.

The full release notes are available at https://koha-community.org/koha-19-11-05-released/

Koha 19.05.10 Released

by Lucas Gass
The Koha community is proud to announce the release of Koha 19.05.10.

Koha 19.05.10 is a bugfix/maintenance release.

It includes 5 enhancements, 55 bugfixes.

The full release notes are available at https://koha-community.org/koha-19-05-10-release/

Koha 18.11.16 Released

by Hayley Mapley
The Koha community is proud to announce the release of Koha 18.11.16.

Koha 18.11.16 is a bugfix/maintenance release.

It includes 1 new feature, 16 bugfixes.

The full release notes are available at https://koha-community.org/koha-18-11-16-released/

Community

Community Announcements

Check out the latest adventure of Fred and the Avenging Chicken as they Don’t Go Much of Anywhere.

New Koha Libraries

KOHA ILS in Taylor’s University Malaysia

by Jesse Kah Ingland
We have recently implemented a challenging KOHA ILS in Taylor’s University Malaysia. The project was awarded November 2019 and went live on 14th February 2020 successfully.

Their previous library system is Virtua and was converted to KOHA ILS 19.05. We did the full data migration for them including MARC, Serial, Acquisition data, fines and Circulation history data since the year 2010. The payment gateway is completed with finishing at the moment while pending for Taylor’s Infra team and Account Team for some final firm live date. Hopefully, it shall be live on the end of April 2020. The implementation is challenging indeed but exciting with many findings. Hereby sharing some implementation experience with the community.

The KOHA ILS in Taylor’s is implemented in three (3)-tier architecture whereby KOHA ILS itself was separated into 3 different installation server: Web server, Application server and Database server. The architecture then duplicated into 2 sets of servers making KOHA ILS were installed in 6 servers on production in total.
KOHA ILS was running in a load balancing mode to access into the 2 sets of servers. The concurrent user access is 3,000 users.

The authentication of KOHA for Taylor’s is integrated into the University’s Active Directory through LDAP.
Student authentication is connecting to Student LDAP, while the staff is connecting to Staff LDAP.
It’s our first implementation in multiple LDAP integration.

Taylor’s University Library is having 6 units of 3M Self Check Machines and 2 units of 3M Book Return Machines (with sorter). Our team has also assisted them to integrate those automation machines to KOHA ILS via SIP2.

In Malaysia, PayPal is not one of the payment method options as transactions are preferable in MYR (Malaysian Ringgit) while taking consideration of the commission charges too. For Taylor’s, they are using the payment mode of ipay88 online payment gateway. We developed a dedicated payment module for KOHA ILS to integrated to the ipay88 for patrons to make fines payment in KOHA. Paid fines then will be updated to Database via SIP2 or direct database method. Besides the ipay88 payment mode, our team were also able to integrate other payment modes such as “FPX” (a payment protocol set by Central Bank of Malaysia), “Molpay” and others provided with a particular set of protocol given.

In addition to the aforementioned integration, Taylor’s also is the first to integrate KOHA ILS to EBSCO discovery online resources in Malaysia. With the applied API developed by Alvet Miranda, patrons get to search online resources from EBSCO discovery via KOHA search. However, the display of the search result is not as complete as prepared by the native interface of EBSCO discovery. For this, we also would like to give credit to the efforts of Asia’s EBSCO team, and effort to Mr. Eugene Espinoza, our KOHA implementer team in the Philippines for their assistant and guidance along with the integration.

Tagging in the effort team of EBSCO team – EBSCO Singapore, EBSCO Malaysia; Mr. Eugene Espinoza; and Alvet Miranda (EBSCO API developer through https://github.com/ebsco/edsapi-koha-plugin.

For any community members that are venturing into such architecture and customization for the above implementation, please do not hesitate to contact us. We can share more information on it.

Taylor’s Library’s KOHA OPAC can be accessed via https://librarycatalogue.taylors.edu.my/

Attaching with the Training group photos we had with Taylor’s Library team, and a photos of Lemonjar’s team at Taylor’s University.

For other photos, please kindly check website news at: https://www.lemonjar.com.my/index.php/2020/04/15/koha-ils-to-taylors-university-malaysia/

Koha Tips and Tricks

Working from home? Chloe Gunn has you covered:

The team at ByWater Solutions have some great new tutorials for you:

Support Provider News

From PTFS Europe
We are holding an online conference for the FE sector on June 3 2020 called ‘FEstival’ at which we will be promoting Koha as an ideal LMS for Further Education college libraries. We have guest speakers from two current Koha libraries as well as sessions by our trainers, implementation team and technical team. This is the advert we have used:

Join us on 3 June for our online FEstival conference to learn about the open source Koha Library Management System and why it is the right choice for your FE College library. Speakers include Librarians with live Koha systems, implementation professionals with installation tips and experts on the Metabase data analytics tool.
All you have to do is join us – oh, and handle your own refreshments!
http://www.ptfs-europe.com/FEstival

From Catalyst IT
In March this year, Catalyst IT took over support for the customers of Calyx Information Essentials when Bob and Irma Birchall, directors of Calyx, made plans to retire. Our Koha team is delighted to be able to continue to host and support Bob and Irma’s Koha libraries.

Upcoming Events

Koha US Cataloging SIG (Special Interest Group): Authorities

by Heather Hernandez
The next Koha US Cataloging SIG (Special Interest Group) monthly round table is on authorities, on May 7 (the 1st Thursday of the month) @ 8am – 9am PT (9 MT/10 CT/11 ET), and like all our round tables, is open to all, and will be recorded and available on the Koha US YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV58VVGJH5V1wNHZqYpAfX7y1dU9eWTXq

Bring (or send me ahead of time at heather_hernandez@nps.gov) your questions–no question is too basic! What are authority records? What’s all this about linking? Merging? Overlaying? Oh, my! We’ll be working live in a real Koha catalog! Join us to ask questions and share your tips and tricks, via the chat or via audio & video–guest presenters always welcome! In June Z39.50 (especially building a library via Z39.50 without OCLC). Full details on our SIG meetings, as well as those of the other SIGS, are on the Koha US calendar, http://koha-us.org/calendar/ with more information at http://koha-us.org/special-interest-groups/ (anyone may join–Koha US membership not required), or email info@koha-us.org