Koha Community Newsletter: October 2017

Koha Community Newsletter
October 2017

Volume 8, Issue 10
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 17.05.05 Released

by Fridolin Somers
The Koha community is proud to announce the release of 17.05.05.

Koha 17.05.05 is a bugfix/maintenance release.

It includes 6 enhancements, 70 bugfixes.

As always you can download the release from
http://download.koha-community.org.

Have a look at release post :

Koha 17.05.05 release

Koha 16.11.13 Released

by Katrin Fischer
The Koha community is proud to announce the release of Koha 16.11.13.

Koha 16.11.13 is a bugfix/maintenance release.

It includes 4 enhancements, 57 bugfixes.

The full release notes are available at

Koha 16.11.13 release

Koha 16.05.18 Released

by Mason James
The Koha community is proud to announce the release of Koha 16.05.18.

Koha 16.05.18 is a bugfix/maintenance release.

It includes 3 enhancements, 44 bugfixes.

The full release notes are available at

Koha 16.05.18 release

KohaDevBox Updates: Try Elasticsearch Now!

by Tomas Cohen Arazi
* Better initial configuration *
KohaDevBox uses the koha-misc4dev [1] project’s tools in order to initialize the database. koha-misc4dev now handles OPAC|intranetBaseURL as expected, and all environmental variables and settings that relate to the koha instance addresses, now respect the configuration from vars/{default|user}.yml

* Elasticsearch support *
KohaDevBox recently added a step to install ICU analysis plugin for Elasticsearch (ES), required by master now. Along with that, koha-misc4dev got the ability to reindex ES. This is really important when testing with ES. This is gracefully handled in the reset_all alias [2].

Remember, to run KohaDevBox with Elasticsearch enabled, you need to run it like this:

# Start from scratch
$ vagrant destroy
$ SKIP_WEBINSTALLER=1 CREATE_ADMIN_USER=1 KOHA_ELASTICSEARCH=1 vagrant up

Warning: it will allocate 4GB of RAM for the virtual machine, so make sure you have enough RAM!

* restart_all vs. reset_all *
People tend to incorrectly run ‘reset_all’ instead of ‘restart_all’ when typing fast, and relying on tab completion. As ‘reset_all’ destroys all your data (it wipes everything and loads from scratch) it was really important to add a confirmation dialog for reset_all, and it got done.

* New aliases *

A new handy alias has been added: ‘kshell’
When run from the vagrant user it will get you directly into the koha-shell on the created instance, and on the kohaclone dir. This is handy when you are running unit tests (i.e. no need to cd /home/vagrant/kohaclone).

For a complete list of the available aliases, refer to the README:md file [3]

* Keeping your KohaDevBox up to date *

From time to time, you can get out of the dev box, and run:

$ git pull
$ vagrant provision
# O ( if you provisioned the box with Elasticsearch support )
$ KOHA_ELASTICSEARCH=1 vagrant provision

[1] https://github.com/joubu/koha-misc4dev
[2] https://github.com/digibib/kohadevbox/commit/65ec928afeb5d7eefe82d001b834839362b8440a
[3] https://github.com/digibib/kohadevbox#aliases

KOCT plugin for Firefox

The KOCT plugin for Firefox is a tool for managing offline Koha circulation. Written by BibLibre developers, it was translated into Italian by the Koha Gruppo Italiano.

Download: https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/koct/

Submitted by Romana Franziska Wallner

Elasticsearch on BWS Sandboxes

From listserv posting by Nick Clemens

Just an update to ES testing, we have now made Elasticsearch available on the BWS sandboxes:
http://sandbox.bywatersolutions.com/cgi-bin/sandbox-dashboard.pl

You will need to set the ‘SearchEngine’ system preference once the sandbox is setup, but records should be indexed and ready to go.

If you have any questions or problems please let me know via email or in IRC.

Community

New Koha Libraries

Community Gossip

EURIG is the European RDA Interest Group. It is mainly composed by national libraries and large institutions that are implementing RDA. The URBE network is one of them and is made up of 18 ecclesiastical libraries. Three libraries of the URBE network use Koha. Stefano Bargioni, cofounder of Koha Gruppo Italiano, is the URBE network representative at EURIG.

Submitted by Romana Franziska Wallner

How To

Jessie Zairo created the following tutorials for you:

Karen Holt created the following tutorials for you:

Discover the following topics with Kelly McElligott:

Support Provider News

Upcoming Events

Library Technology Conclave (LTC) 2018 – Goa University Library

by Amit Gupta
Koha Conclave started by Informatics two years ago, is re-launched with new
name and expanded scope as Library Technology Conclave – LTC for short. The
last Conclave was held in Pune in partnership with the Information Resource
Centre, TCS, Pune. The forthcoming event – LTC 2018 – is being organized in
partnership with Goa University Library.

LTC2018 will not only continue to focus on Koha, but will expand the scope
covering a wide range of technologies that are redefining the future of
libraries. LTC 2018 will focus on advances in Koha, emerging E-Resource
Management Systems (ERMS) in open source domain like CORAL, new
developments in Discovery Services and other related technologies.

The star attraction to LTC2018 will be three chosen global leaders in
library technology as invited speakers:

Marshal Breeding, USA – author of the world famous Library Technology
Guides who is also behind the LTR (Library Technology Reports) published by
ALA.
Christopher Cormack, New Zealand – one of the original developers of
Koha
Katrin Fischer, Germany – Release Maintainer and Quality Assurance
Manager, Koha

LTS 2018 will have Pre-Conclave Tutorials on January 23, 2018 which will
include:

Advanced Workshop on Koha by Katrin Fischer
Introductory workshop on Coral by Christopher Cormack
Advanced Workshop on DSpace – CRIS by Dr. V Gopakumar, University
Librarian, Goa University

LTC2018 will have many other innovative events on Library Technologies and
awards to be distributed. Please block your dates to be in Goa from 23rd to
25th January 2018 for this exciting and knowledge enriching event that
should help you in re-imagining your library.

Looking forward to seeing you at the conclave.

2017 South Texas Koha Summit

by Jessie Zairo

South Texas Koha Summit Event Date:: Friday November 17, 2017
Event Time:: 9:00am – 4:00pm
Event Location:: La Retama Central Library
Event Address:: 805 Comanche St, Corpus Christi, TX 78401

Please read the full post here.

Koha-US Users Group: November Meeting

Koha-US holds monthly online meetings every second Wednesday of the month
via Zoom.

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, November 8th, 2017 at 10:30 am CST (time
converter
<https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=koha-US+November+Online+Meeting&iso=20171108T1030&p1=5227>
).

These meetings are open to any and all who wish to attend and are meant to
be a platform for us to share and discuss Koha-related issues, ideas, and
solutions. Meetings are also the place to have your voice heard with
regards to the growth and development of koha-US as an organization.

If you have topics for the agenda, please send them my way.

Watch for links to the agenda and meeting space next week.

For more information, don’t hesitate to contact us
http://koha-us.net/index.php/Participants

Jason Robb
Koha-US Secretary

Past Events

Summary of Swedish Koha User Group Meeting at Kristianstad University Library

Steering Committee for the Swedish Koha User Group
Between 4-5 October 2017 the Swedish Koha User Group held its fourth meeting at the Kristianstad University Library. About 65 people from Sweden but also visitors from Norway and Denmark attended the meeting.

For the first time Koha service providers, including BibLibre, imCode, Kreablo, and Librotech were present outside of the meeting. The Koha service providers had their own stands where they could market their services to the participants.

The meeting started with the host Kristianstad University Library welcoming all participants. The Steering Committee of the Swedish Koha User Group was presented.

The Technical University of Denmark, DTU, held an introductory speech talking about how they moved from 28 years of Aleph to a Koha platform with a custom built OPAC front-end “DTU FindIt” and cataloging service. The migration work is still ongoing and in 2019 all systems are expected to have been migrated completely. DTU has a two-year full-service agreement with BibLibre including free upgrades.

Then Katrineholm Public Library presented their approach to Koha. It is a library composed of 3 regular branches and 16 school library branches. Katrineholm Public Library has signed an agreement with Libriotech for migration, support and maintenance.

Following this, the delegates formed discussion groups after the Open Spaces model and discussed fruitfully various Koha related themes. The themes were:

Koha and Inter-Library Loans
Koha and the OPAC
Koha and Fees
The Swedish Koha User Group – why should we have it? How should it be developed?
Koha and translation into Swedish
Koha and Technology + Development
Koha and Reports

Andreas Hedström Mace from Stockholm University Library held a presentation on the Koha QA process and introduced the delegates to the koha.se Wiki platform.

Viktor Sarge from Region Halland held a presentation on the Koha translation process.

The first day finished with the host giving a guided tour of the University library and after that many delegates shared a meal at a local restaurant.

The second day started with Stian F. Kristensen presenting the major Koha project that Deichmanske/Oslo Public Library is pursuing. The City of Oslo is opening a brand new Public Library premise in 2020. The project is ambitious and new technology and services are required and sought after in this new library space. In the spirit to support this Deichmanske decided to move to Koha and also to “Linked Data”/RDF technology. Everything developed in this project is open source and can be found here: https://github.com/digibib/ls.ext

The meeting continued with hands-on workshops having four different sessions. The sessions were:

Doing translation work in Koha
Doing the QA-process in Koha
Mingle with the delegates
Meeting the Koha service providers

After the Workshop and some Swedish “fika” (coffee and cake) Amelia Andersdotter presented the latest news on the new General Data Protection Regulation that is affecting virtually all organizations in the European Union. Amelia was previously a member of the European Parliament representing Sweden and the Swedish Pirate Party and is now working for the privacy-focused NGO Dataskydd.net (https://dataskydd.net/).

The meeting ended with a summary of the two days and the effort to make an initial Swedish Roadmap within the User Group.

See original post and pictures