Koha 'how-to' videos

Nicole Engard has been producing a series of videos to help people learn more about Koha. Head over to her blog to see how she's getting on:

Lately I have been recording a series of tutorial videos on Koha. I’m going to be sharing them here, one per week – and here’s the first in the series:

Koha does not mean 'to steal'

This makes me extremely angry. One of our key online tools is our library catalogue Koha. It's patron-centred, allowing students and staff to write review, tag items, create and share reading lists, rate and recommend books- it's a wonderful tool for promoting literacy. It was developed 12 years ago by the Horowhenua Library Trust and open sourced as a gift to the world (koha means gift in Maori). It is inconceivable that a foreign corporation could apply for, and receive, a trademark for the word Koha in New Zealand. It was developed here, it's a common Maori word and it's community owned. Large international firms who can hire better lawyer than a community trust shouldn't be able to bulldoze their way through law. It's just wrong.

Donations are being gathered here for the legal fight.

Summer reading...

When I'm not learning to be a father, I try to read as much as I can (which falls short of as much as I'd like to). One of Koha's cool features is the ability to create and share lists. Here's a quick list called 'Mark's Favourite Books' which I'll continue to update. Happy reading...

Koha 3.2 : The next step

We're about to implement two exciting features in our library: RFID and self-check. It's not common for school libraries to use RFID, but as the cost comes down and there is more support for what it can do I'm sure it'll become increasingly popular. Once you make the transition from a 'dumb' tattle-tape security system to and RFID system, you can have a lot more fun with your items. One of the projects I'm hoping to get students involved in this year is to integrate an RFID reader, Koha and a touchscreen so students can walk up to a screen, place a book in front of it and have Koha pull up reviews of that item or recommendations based on that title.

When our Librarian and I started talking about self-check, my first thought was 'Oh... I wonder if Koha can support it?' I hadn't heard anything on the lists about it so I was prepared to start looking for some developer funding, but sure enough, it's one of the features Koha has that isn't widely known.

Below is Jo Ransom and Chris Cormack's presentation on Koha 3.2, due out in the next little while. I'm really looking forward to the upgrade: there are a whole lot of new features including enhancements to the federated search feature in Koha.

Koha 3.2 : The next step

View more presentations from jransom.

LCA2010 presentation

Koha and SCIS

Funny how things work: at almost the same time as Mason James finished work on our Koha/SCIS integration, I noticed this on the Calyx.com.au website:

In a boon to Australian and New Zealand schools considering the Koha open source integrated library management system, CALYX information essentials recently demonstrated the seamless upload of bibliographic records from SCIS to Koha.

...which is preciesly what Mason has just done for us. Great minds think alike I guess. The Calyx site also has a great explanation of why Koha is such a create ILS:

Why Koha?

Koha is a full featured integrated library system (ILS). In use worldwide in libraries of all sizes, Koha is a true enterprise-class ILS with comprehensive functionality including basic or advanced options. Koha includes modules for circulation, cataloguing, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more. For a comprehensive overview of features visit the Koha feature map.

Features

• Friendly and intuitive web-based catalogue searching
• Accessible from any web enabled computer
• Powerful self-service tools for patrons
• Circulation, borrower and fees management
• Acquisitions, cataloguing, authority control, serials
• Koha 3.0 is OAI-PMH compatible
• FRBR-style results display
• True n-tier architecture
• Granular permissions in the administration module
• Branch flexibility and control
• Easily create records from scratch or download records from free sources
• Customize record types and locations to match your needs
• Web-based search engine integrates with your existing intranet
• Can easily integrate with existing member’s database
• Manage digital objects
• Reading-level, abstracts, thumbnail cover images
• Full utilization of record metadata
• Incorporate digital resources directly into the catalog results
• Integrated federated searches for databases and other external resources
• Library standards compliance (MARC, Z39.50)
• A powerful full-featured search engine
• Scalability from a thousand to tens of millions of records
• Multiple record formats (MARC, XML, etc.)

Return on Investment

Ohloh.com has a great calculator for assessing the investment made into open source projects. It takes a project and analyses its code, then works out how much it would cost to pay a developer (at $55,000k/yr) to produce an equivalent project. Some of the projects took even me by surprise: got a spare US$150m? You could commission an Office suite. If your fortunes have waned a little in the recessionary times and you only US$15m sitting round, you can buy yourself a graphic manipulation project similar to Photoshop. It makes Firefox seem like a bargain at only US$840,000!!
Some of my other favourite projects are listed below:

Open Office:

Gimp:

Moodle:

Koha:


However you look at it, these numbers are a ringing endorsement of the open source model. Individuals, groups and organisations contributing a few hours (or dollars) here and there can pull together teams that dwarf most software development companies, simply by harnessing the power of community. But the great thing is that for the end user, it's all free.

Koha and 5 star ratings

Our developer Mason James has just finished a prototype for a 5-star rating system for our Koha installation. At the moment it's only available on the testing site but it's looking really good. Patrons can log in, search for an item, rate it (on the search results or details page) and share those ratings with others.
I'm thinking that if we can get students to log in to rate an item, we're close to getting them to log in and write reviews, renew books, tag items etc. There's also a deeper goal here: if students see other students rating and making reading recommendations, it's the ultimate way to create a culture that promotes literacy and reading.

Edit: this feature is being contributed to Koha 3.2 along with our reading recommendation engine.