Koha Community Newsletter: February 2021
Koha Community Newsletter: February 2021 
Volume 12, Issue 2
ISSN 2153-8328
Edited by Michael Kuhn
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Table of contents
Development
Current Koha versions
Read the respective release notes by clicking the revision number.
| Date | Revision | Notes |
| 23 February 2021 | Koha 20.11.03 | stable |
| 23 February 2021 | Koha 20.05.09 | oldstable |
| 24 February 2021 | Koha 19.11.15 | oldoldstable |
The Debian packages are usually available within days after the release.
New Koha revisions
On 24 February Victor Grousset announced the release of Koha 19.11.15. This bugfix/maintenance release includes 1 new feature, 9 enhancements and 32 bugfixes (2 of them security fixes).
On 23 February 2021 Fridolin Somers announced the release of Koha 20.11.03. This bugfix/maintenance release includes 2 new features, 22 enhancements and 76 bugfixes (2 of them security fixes).
On 23 February 2021 Andrew Fuerste-Henry announced the release of Koha 20.05.09. This bugfix/maintenance release includes 1 new feature, 13 enhancements and 65 bugfixes (2 of them security fixes).
Community
New Koha libraries
Austria
- Gemeindebücherei Hard via LMS Cloud
Germany
- Stadtbibliothek Dinslaken via LMS Cloud
- Stadtbücherei Barmstedt via LMS Cloud
- Stadtbücherei Glückstadt via LMS Cloud
- Stadtbücherei Neustadt (Hessen) via LMS Cloud
- Stadtbücherei Waiblingen via LMS Cloud
Spain
- Rede de bibliotecas públicas de Galicia, via Xercode Media Software
United Kingdom
- Plymouth Marjon University, via PTFS Europe
USA
- Dothan Houston County Library System in Dothan (AL), via Bywater Solutions
- Flagstaff City-Coconino County Public Library in Flagstaff (AZ), via Bywater Solutions
- Lamar Public Library in Lamar (CO), via Bywater Solutions
Koha tips and tricks
- Accountlines reports in 20.05 (Bywater Solutions)
- Cookie consent in Koha (PTFS Europe)
- Customizing the menu in the staff client (Bywater Solutions)
- External e-resources in Koha library system (RAFLIMTS)
- Filtering overdue report (Bywater Solutions)
- Flexibility with the long overdue cron (Bywater Solutions)
- Koha 20.05 upgrade notes (Bywater Solutions)
- Long overdue (Lost): How long is long? (Bywater Solutions)
- New options for tracking lost and claims returned items (Bywater Solutions)
- Paypal update (Bywater Solutions)
- Prefillitem preference (Bywater Solutions)
- Receiving purchase suggestions (Bywater Solutions)
- Using the patron import tool (PTFS Europe)
Upcoming events
KohaCon 2021
According to https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/KohaCon21_Proposals it seems no decision has yet been made where to hold KohaCon 2021.
Kohathon 2021
Koha user group “koha-US” is getting ready for Kohathon 2021. This will be a free event streamed to Youtube and open to anyone who wants to attend. They have set a date for April 28 beginning at 8:00 am Eastern Time and going until 6:00 pm Pacific Time (that’s 13:00 UTC on April 28 until 01:00 UTC on April 29).
If you are interested in seeing what they did last year, you can check out http://koha-us.org/kohathon-2020/ which has a full schedule and links to all of last year’s presentations.
Open source Twitter chat #ChatOpenSOpen
The next Open source Twitter chat with Rogan Hamby is on Twitter with the hashtag #ChatOpenS on March 17, 12-1 pm EDT. It’s a networking chat to bring the open source library community together.
Upcoming meetings
For all upcoming IRC meetings see Next IRC meetings or the Koha Community calendar.
For any other Koha-related meeting just see the Koha Community calendar.
Past events
Past meetings
For all past IRC meetings see the following links or the Koha Community calendar.
For any other Koha-related meeting just see the Koha Community calendar.
Catalyst Open Source Academy 2021
by Aleisha Amohia
The Catalyst Open Source Academy is one of Catalyst‘s most important projects, and my favourite part of the year. We spend the first week of the Academy teaching high school students various open source tools and processes, and spend the second week helping them make their first contributions to an open source project.
The Koha project has been involved in the Academy for many years. It’s a special project because the entire global Koha community gets behind us, testing patches and providing feedback overnight.
At Academy 2021, the Koha team had eight eager and talented students. They tested patches written by other developers, wrote new features and enhancements, fixed bugs, created new item type icons, and improved Koha documentation – all of which required the students to learn new programming languages, become familiar with Koha and Git, and install their development environments.
The students threw themselves into project week, taking on all of these challenges. When they became more comfortable with our procedures and systems, they began helping each other and trying more difficult work. It’s so rewarding to work with students and to watch them learn and grow, especially when they would get excited about their patches Passing QA or, even better, being Pushed to Master!
During this project week, we also operate a “kittens” reward system, where students are awarded kittens for writing and testing patches. They started off wary of the pressure to “save” kittens, but found themselves motivated by the healthy competition as we progressed through the week.
By the end of the week, the Koha team had written a combined 100 patches, many of which had already been tested and pushed by the community. They also “saved” 246 kittens altogether, which is more than double the amount of kittens that the Koha team saved at the previous Academy.
I’m so proud of what the students achieved in their short week working on Koha, and also incredibly grateful to the Koha community that rallied every night to move our students’ patches through the QA process, and ensure they had the best possible experience developing with Koha.
See and hear Ian Beardslee’s Catalyst Academy talk at KohaCon 20.