Koha Community Newsletter: June 2021
Koha Community Newsletter: June 2021 
Volume 12, Issue 6
ISSN 2153-8328
Edited by Michael Kuhn
Please submit news items to 
Table of contents
Development
Current Koha versions
Read the respective release notes by clicking the revision number.
| Date | Revision | Notes |
| 24 June 2021 | Koha 21.05.01 | stable |
| 28 June 2021 | Koha 20.11.07 | oldstable |
| 25 June 2021 | Koha 20.05.13 | oldoldstable |
The Debian packages are usually available within days after the release.
New Koha revisions
On 24 June 2021 Nick Clemens and Kyle Hall announced the release of Koha 21.05.01. This bugfix/maintenance release includes 2 enhancements and 23 bugfixes.
On 25 June 2021 Victor Grousset announced the release of Koha 20.05.13. This bugfix/maintenance release includes 3 enhancements, 11 bugfixes and 1 security fix.
On 28 June Victor Grousset announced the release of Koha 20.11.07. This bugfix/maintenance release includes 2 enhancements, 17 bugfixes and 1 security fix.
Plugin Export
El plugin Export se ha realizado con el patrocinio de la Red de Bibliotecas de Galicia. Cuando se realiza una exportación en Koha, se está exigiendo un esfuerzo al sistema que puede provocar la ralentización del mismo, y esto derive en una mala experiencia de usuario. Este plugin se ha hecho de forma que el bibliotecario puede continuar haciendo las exportaciones de forma normal, como se venía haciendo en Koha, pero que se harán efectivas fuera de horario de trabajo, mediante un cron. Una vez se completen estas tareas de exportación, el usuario que la ha realizado recibirá un aviso mediante correo electrónico conforme ha terminado su trabajo, para acceder y descargar el archivo comprimido en zip.
Vaski Libraries joins the Koha Community
Vaski Libraries joined the Koha Community on 4 June 2021. Their Koha is a national fork of the community version of Koha. It is hosted and maintained by Koha-Suomi Oy, a non-profit Finnish limited company. Vaski Libraries is a library consortium of 18 municipalities in Southwest Finland. Koha-Suomi Oy now hosts 9 Koha installations providing library services to around 1.5 million people with about 25 million loans per year.
Koha-Suomi Oy is in the process of reducing national tweaks and moving closer to the community version. The goal is to be able to participate more actively in the development of the community version and to make version upgrades easier in Finnish Koha installations.
Asko Autio, Kodo Korkalo, Johanna Räisä, Lari Strand, Emmi Takkinen and Anneli Österman
Koha-Suomi Oy and Vaski Libraries
Community
New Koha libraries
Austria
- Erzabtei St. Peter in Salzburg, via Admin Kuhn
Germany
- Stadtbibliothek Baden-Baden via LMS Cloud
- Stadtbücherei Markgröningen via LMS Cloud
Spain
USA
- Concordia University Texas (CTX) Library in Austin (TX) via Bywater Solutions
- Dubuque County Library in Dubuque (IA) via Bywater Solutions
- Motlow State Community College in Smyrna (TN) via Bywater Solutions
- Santa Fe Public Library in Santa Fe (NM), via Bywater Solutions
- Worcester State University Library in Worcester (MA) via Bywater Solutions
Koha tips and tricks
- Administration testing (Bywater Solutions)
- Be a part of the Koha Community! (Bywater Solutions)
- Closing school libraries for the summer (Bywater Solutions)
- Fusionar usuarios desde una lista en Koha (Xercode Media Software)
- Hold expiration dates (Bywater Solutions)
- Jquery: Bad e-mails (koha-US)
- Jquery hackdown: Cataloging labels vs. Automatic library setting (koha-US)
- Koha Community announces 21.05 release (Bywater Solutions)
- Release of Koha 21.05 (Catalyst)
- Self check in module (Bywater Solutions)
- The last borrower (Bywater Solutions)
- Using patron clubs (Bywater Solutions)
Support provider news
- Bywater Solutions partners with koha-US to raise money for the Koha Community (Bywater Solutions)
- Bywaters Solutions’ partners sponsor development in Koha 21.05 release (Bywater Solutions)
- Bywater Solutions partners with Patron Point to integrate library marketing within Koha (Bywater Solutions)
GWMAB activity in Wikidata based on Koha catalogues
The GWMAB, Gruppo Wikidata Musei Archivi Biblioteche was founded some months ago by
Stefano Bargioni (User:Bargioni), Carlo Bianchini (User:Carlobia), Claudio Forziati (User:Uomovariabile), Alessandra Moi (User:Alessandra.Moi), Camillo Carlo Pellizzari di San Girolamo (User:Epìdosis) with the aims of:
- promote the use of Wikidata in the cultural heritage;
- spread the knowledge and use of the free tools available for the production of data on Wikidata;
- increase the number of people who, individually or institutionally, collaborate in the construction of Wikidata;
- promote research and field projects of cultural institutions for the publication of Linked Open Data via Wikidata;
- foster the comparison, dissemination and exchange of points of view and best practices, of theoretical and practical experiences and of research projects developed by the participants, on a personal or institutional basis.
Activities promoted by the GWMAB include the creation of Mix-n-match (MnM) catalogs with data exported or scraped from Koha authority records.
Imported catalogs and reconciliation results are listed in the following table (% of matches as of June 14, 2021).
| name | MnM creation date | WD Prop | MnM cat. | # of entries | matched % | auto matched % | unmatched % |
|
Feb 10, 2020 |
81499 |
36.1 |
29.0 |
33.9 |
|||
|
Mar 5, 2020 |
101054 |
52.4 |
15.0 |
26.4 |
|||
|
Jul 6, 2020 |
97452 |
45.0 |
23.0 |
31.7 |
|||
|
Nov 20, 2020 |
19467 |
28.2 |
4.0 |
67.3 |
|||
|
Nov 26, 2020 |
n/a |
222092 |
8.1 |
44.0 |
47.2 |
||
|
Dec 20, 2020 |
14280 |
37.7 |
30.0 |
32.0 |
|||
|
Dec 20, 2020 |
n/a |
114701 |
0.7 |
49.0 |
49.3 |
||
|
Dec 29, 2020 |
n/a |
226444 |
5.1 |
52.0 |
42.6 |
||
|
Jan 19, 2021 |
32407 |
33.9 |
35.0 |
30.4 |
|||
|
Jan 19, 2021 |
166038 |
10.1 |
50.0 |
39.6 |
|||
|
Jan 30, 2021 |
68336 |
49.9 |
23.0 |
26.7 |
|||
|
Feb 18, 2021 |
31761 |
24.5 |
43.0 |
31.9 |
|||
|
Feb 21, 2021 |
28689 |
31.3 |
33.0 |
35.5 |
|||
|
Feb 21, 2021 |
9624 |
34.2 |
32.0 |
33.3 |
|||
|
Mar 5, 2021 |
62764 |
6.0 |
54.0 |
39.9 |
|||
|
Mar 18, 2021 |
3963 |
9.4 |
21.0 |
69.4 |
|||
|
Mar 12, 2021 |
20921 |
5.6 |
10.0 |
82.8 |
|||
|
May 9, 2021 |
8962 |
25.9 |
38.0 |
35.5 |
|||
|
May 27, 2021 |
19576 |
25.9 |
40.0 |
33.7 |
|||
| TOTAL | 1330030 | 19.7 | 39.3 | 40.1 |
Statistics of the contribution to Wikidata of Koha catalogs are graphically and dynamically represented in User:Epìdosis/Koha/Statistics.
GWMAB activity with Greek and Cyprus libraries
The GWMAB, Gruppo Wikidata Musei Archivi Biblioteche, as a consequence of the creation of Greek and Cypriot catalogs in Mix-n-match (MnM), involved librarians of the two communities training them to MnM and helping them to adopt policies for entity management (especially personal names) in their respective Koha catalogs, to start RDA adoption in a Linked Open Data perspective.
- First meeting (15 April 2021): creation of the account; setting of preferences, common.js, userpage; basic use of MnM;
- Second meeting (16 April 2021): advanced use of MnM; creation and improvement of new items; requirement and effects on the library catalog (RDA etc.);
- Third meeting (21 April 2021): working hour.
Participants:
- Barbara Aristidou: Representing the Cyprus University of Technology Library, Barbara is the person responsible for the cataloguing team at the Cyprus University of Technology Library. Working for the Wikidata project is a big challenge for us as a team. We would like to enrich our records with English and Greek terms and not only, but also with all the added information given about a term. We would also like to do these enrichments not only for author names, but also for other types of authorities, such as topical terms, so that we will be able to create user friendly catalogs. We would like users to be able to search using not only English authority terms (since we are using LC subject headings) but also Greek. In addition a complete “description” of an authority is the best “gift” for a user.
- Antonia Nicolaou: Representing the Cyprus University of Technology Library, Antonia is the person responsible for the authority control of the library. She is using several tools and authority files for authority record updates and creation of references. Also she is enriching the authorities, especially topical terms using broader and narrow terms. She is trying to apply methods of authority linkage and cross references so that the catalog will be catalog user-friendly for the users and the researchers. All the team is educated in authority enrichment.
- Kyriaki Michael: Representing the Cyprus University of Technology Library Kyriaki is one of the basic members of the cataloguing team, she not only updating the library’s catalog but she is also supporting the libraries who are cooperating with the CUT library for cataloguing support, such as school libraries and Limassol Regional libraries.
- Vana Anastasiadou: Representing the Cyprus University of Technology Library Vana is one of the basic members of the cataloguing team, she not only updating the library’s catalog but she is also supporting the libraries who are cooperating with the CUT library for cataloguing support, such as school libraries and Limassol Regional libraries.
- Pany Skitini: Representing the Cyprus Library and the Cultural Servises of Ministry of Education and Culture in Cyprus and is responsible for the cataloging team of Cyprus Bibliography, the education of catalogers of the Union Catalog of government libraries, the education of Koha for employees working in other libraries such us municipal, community, school libraries. The seminar gave us the opportunity to use tools that will help us develop our authorities and give the opportunity to other libraries in Cyprus and abroad to research and use them correctly.
- Christiana Kyprou: Representing the Cyprus Library and the Cultural Servises of Ministry of Education and Culture in Cyprus and is member of the cataloging team of Cyprus Bibliography, the education of Koha for employees working in other libraries such us municipal, community, schools libraries.
- Afroditi Fragkou: Participating as an individual and not as my organization’s representative, I was fascinated by how Wikidata works. We have now created a small group of volunteers that are going to edit personal authority records of Keratsini – Drapetsona Municipal library that make use of MARC21 700 authority field (connecting the name of non-Greek authors with its greek transcription). Once we’re done, we are going to upload our authorities and proceed from then on.
Upcoming events
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.
Virtual Koha law library user group
Bywater Solutions will host a virtual Koha law library user group at AALL 2021 Conference. Join the user group on 19 July 2021.
2021 koha-US annual conference
The hybrid koha-US annual conference will be held in McKinney (TX) with an online component.
- 2021 koha-US annual conference (Bywater Solutions)
Past events
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.
Koha-D-A-CH-Anwendertreffen
The presentations from the “3. virtuelles Koha-D-A-CH-Anwendertreffen” (Virtual user meeting for German speaking Koha users) of 9 June 2021 are available here: