Koha Community Newsletter: August 2015
Koha Community Newsletter 
August 2015
Volume 6, Issue 8
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 3.20.3 Released
by Chris Cormack
The Koha release team are proud to announce the release of Koha
3.20.3. This is a maintenance release but contains 1 security fix
also.
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, or wait for a few hours
for the packages to be available.
Please read the full release notes at
Koha 3.18.8 Released
by Liz Rea
The Koha release team are proud to announce the release of Koha
3.18.10. This is a maintenance release and contains 1 security fix.
All Koha 3.18.x users are recommended to upgrade. As always you can download at download.koha-community.org, or wait for
a few hours for the packages to be available.
Please read the full release notes at
Thanks to all of our contributors for this release!
Browse Interface for Koha, built on Elasticsearch
by Kathryn Tyree
As mentioned in last month’s newsletter, lots of work has been done to implement Elasticsearch for Koha, and that it is ready for testing.
This month a Browse Interface was built for Koha, on top of Elasticsearch. You can currently browse by Author, Title and Subject. Check it out here.
Please provide testing feedback to developer Robin Sheat on the bug or find Eythian in IRC.
Thanks to Bywater Solutions for coordinating the funding for this
Global Bug Squashing Day
Please help the Koha community squash some bugs September 3rd! There are ways to help for everyone!
Below are some ways you can help from the Koha Community Wiki page – 2015-09-03 Global bug squashing day:
What to do
Really anything that helps improving Koha! 🙂
Some ideas:
- Check old open bugs are still relevant to newer versions, weed out duplicate bugs, add more information to make bugs easier to reproduce
- Comment on bugs ‘In Discussion’, give feedback on new features and help us figure out how things should work
- Test patches, comment on them or even sign them off
- Sandboxes: If you do not have access to your own Koha instance or permissions on your system, you can use the Sandboxes set up by BibLibre or PTFS Europe
- If you are using your own Koha git or gitified installation, these might be helpful: Sign off on patches | Sign off on a pushed branch
- Any questions? Talk to us on IRC!
More information on how you can help can be found on the Wiki’s I want to help page.
Speaking of which …Please take a look at the next section for specific bugs developers have requested help with.
Bugs and Patches
Take a look at the following bugs and see if you can help squash them!
- Plack – Out of the box support on packages
- ByWater is seeking funding for a claimed returned development and
comments on the bug report regarding how things should be done: Extend and enhance “Claims returned” lost status
Information on how you can help can be found on the Wiki’s I want to help page.
Community
Community Gossip
Chris Cormack discusses some random statistics about the last 5 years of Koha.
Nicole Engard is a community moderator for http://opensource.com. She invites you to submit your open source story. From the Koha Community Listserv.
How To
Vimal Kumar shows you how to move your old database to a new Koha installation.
Upcoming Events
September General IRC Meeting
The September general IRC meeting will be held on the 9th at 10:00 UTC.
The agenda, links to the minutes, and other information is here.
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 North American Users Group 2015
by Rebecca Crago
The Koha North American Users Group met from August 5-8 in Erie, Pennsylvania, for their second annual conference. The program began with two days of conference sessions and roundtable discussions, followed by two days of a ‘hackfest,’ where attendees grouped together to learn about submitting a patch to Koha using Git, as well as the ins-and-outs of SQL reporting. The final day began with a ‘show and tell’ of custom user features (read more at http://cragolibrarian.com/2015-kohana-show-and-tell/), and concluded with various customization work. Mercyhurst University staff worked to redesign their OPAC on the final day, check out the difference at http://cragolibrarian.com/mercyhursts-new-opac-design/.
Resources from the conference can be found at http://koha-na.org/index.php/Conference_Resources, and pictures of the event at http://cragolibrarian.com/2015kohana/. Heather Braum also blogged about the event at http://www.heatherbraum.info/.
August Development IRC Meeting
The August development IRC meeting was held on the 26th at 14:00 and 21:00 UTC.
The agenda, links to the minutes, and other information is here.
Editor, Koha Community Newsletter