|
From: |
Unknown |
1.4:
The 1.3.0 has been released a few weeks ago. The 1.3.1 will come
very soon. bugfixes, and it will add management tools for MARC
parameters, and a first draft of MARCdetail. Then, we will
continue toward 1.3.2 which will add MARC add and modify of
biblios.
The french UNIMARC parameters tables should be avaible a few days
after the 1.3.1 release, but won't be integrated during
installation process (maybe in 1.3.2).
Docs:
The developer level documentation (POD) written by Andrew
Arensburger and others (Thanks guys!), is now being auto posted to
http://www.kohalabs.com/resources/pod/ -- the documentation is
rebuit from source every night to ensure the most up-to-date
information is available.
Koha in the news:
Koha made the news again this week. Marshall Breeding wrote a
somewhat negative piece about Open Source in libraries for
Information Today (http://www.infotoday.com/it/oct02/breeding.htm)
which was also picked up by LinuxToday
(http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-10-09-014-26-RV-SW-PB).
The feedback at LinuxToday was mixed. It seems we have a long road
ahead of us to convince people that open source can make as big a
dent in the ILS market as it has in the webserver and operating
systems markets.
Community:
As more libraries have begun looking into Koha, we've started
testing it with bigger data sets. One library is testing Koha
themselves with over 450,000 items in their database. A developer
is also testing Koha against a collection of just over 2,000,000
items.
Another development aimed at overcoming the obstacles to wider koha
adoption is the Koha2010 project, which gets its name from the
Oregon Library Association's 'Vision 2010' strategic plan. This
project is aimed at building a dialog between koha developers,
librarians, and library associations to guide the development of
Koha. My intent is to ensure that Koha can fulfill all the
requirements of these groups strategic plans for the next 5-10
years. If you'd like to join the conversation, please send an
email to address@hidden and follow the directions
you get in return mail. You can also see
http://www.kohalabs.com/projects/koha2010/ for more information.
From the Kaitiaki:
Sorry that it's been so long since I've put one of these out. It
always seems like something else gets in the way, doesn't it?
Hopefully the breadth and importance of the news below is engaging
enought for you to forgive my lapse in sending things out lately.
Development:
Paul is closing in on the next 1.3 release and Steve is plugging
away at the next 1.2 release, but the biggest development news this
time around is administrative. We've decided that the 1.3 series is
such a radical departure from the existing 1.2 stuff, that it will
become Koha 2.0 instead of 1.4. This release marks a watershed for
us, and deserves the recognition that 2.0 will give it.
Congratulations to Paul and everyone else who has been involved in
the 1.3 work.
Community:
Chris Cormack (the release manager for the 1.2 series) recently
attended two conferences in Ohio, here's what he had to say:
Well I think the trip went really well, Stephen and the rest of the
NPL are feeling even more positive now. The OLC conference was good
lots of interesting topics and tho we were the last session on the
last day. We still had about 20-30 people stay to listen about koha.
Got to the think linux show the next day and got my pass and
stuff. Listened to the Linux terminal server project and other thin
clients. Interesting stuff for libraries, specially coupled with
the cool serial over ip hubs they were showing off as well.
Then came the presentation, I didnt end up using my slides because
they were aimed at a more libraryish audience. So I talked about
koha, explaining what a library system is to start :-) Then did the
history of koha, were we are at now, how they can help, how to get
it etc. About 25 people listening.
People drove in from Michigan and from Grandview Heights (near
Columbus, Ohio), three to four hour drives for both groups, just to
talk about Koha and how it might fit into their libraries. (One of
the libraies is a consortium that has a circulation of about 1.5
million a year! They'll both be in touch with NPL and Koha.
All in all a very positive trip it was heartening how many people
had heard of the project. And the guy from debian was keen to get
koha into the distro.
Koha also had a stall (manned by Katipo and HLT) at the 2002 Lianza
conference http://www.confer.co.nz/lianza2002/ -- way to go!
On a different tack, I'd like to welcome The Linux Box
(http://www.linuxbox.nu/) of Ann Arbor, Michigan as the newest
vendor offering commercial support for Koha. If you are interested
in supporting Koha, please let me know. We'd be happy to add you to
our support vendors page at http://koha.org/installation/support.html
French Koha:
Paul Poulain has announced that demo.koha-fr.org and fr.koha.org are
now live. The first is a demo site where you can play with the
emerging 1.3 series (it's especially nice to see that Koha is
becoming bilingual). The second site is the french language home
for Koha. These efforts are both huge wins for Koha in terms of
visibility.
Nicolas Morin wrote:
And the other day I went to a formation session on library web
sites: it turned out every single librarian attending (a group of
about 20 people from different libraries) knew that Koha existed :
"isn't it that open source library system that's talked about?"
So I think librarians awareness about Koha is good here in France :
but to really take off we would need one first library to use it.
I think what worked well in France so far is that, so to speak, we
played a duet : one programmer who can answer questions about the
software, the install, etc; and one librarian that can publicize Koha
and get colleagues interested. Couldn't we try to set up such "duets"
elsewhere?
This does look like a good model to follow within our other language
translation groups. The french community Koha mailing list is up to
51 subscribers, and there seems to be a great deal of work and
excitement on it.
Two last bits of news from the french koha community:
* the templating of the OPAC now being over, translation of the OPAC
will begin very soon : to start working on the translation of the
software itself is obviously a major step towards implementing Koha in
France.
* This week also, Koha-France contributed a list of report features we
would love to see implemented in Koha : see
http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/wiki/index.php?page=ReportFeatures for this
list. Any contribution to this list is welcome. If you want to get
involved, the Koha wiki is a good place to look at :
http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/wiki/index.php?page=KohaProject
thanks,
the Koha team
From the Kaitiaki:
Another week, and another bunch of work getting done. Two items
that've come up a bit recently are a need for more and better
administration tools and a reorganization of the Koha source code.
The first should help make Koha much easier for a library to
manage, allowing changes to be made without having to dive into the
database itself. The second should help the developers by cleaning
up the structure they have to work with every time they fix a bug
or add a feature. I'm anxious to see the fruits of both efforts.
Community:
Paul has started a french language complement to the koha-translate
mailing list. His comments are pertinent:
when a developper modifies a template (which happends yesterday
from me), i think translators should be informed. As translators
are not necessary following the koha-cvs ml, i think we should
create a koha-translate ml, for translators.
note : i'm happy to announce creation of address@hidden
for french translators and address@hidden for french
developpers.
The main translation list can be subscribed to from:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/koha-translate
France:
Nicolas Morin has talked to two libraries in New Caladonia who are
starting to work with Koha. He'll be releasing a longer article
about it shortly, but here are some of the highlights:
* the first library has two branches 12 kms apart, amounting
to 600 meters square (1800 meters square in 2005), 35000
documents, with a yearly increase of 5000 ocuments. It's run by
a team of 10 people. A small library, but growing steadily.
* the second library is run by a 38 people strong team, has 74000
documents, did 260.000 transactions in 2001.
Both libraries are jointly considering the switch to Koha. Among
their motives, they listed:
* the GPL license that would allow them to install Koha in rural
and often poor areas that could not pay for a proprietary system,
and thus increasing the value of their network
* the openness of the source code, that would allow local
businesses or the university computer people to support the system
Both libraries will evaluate Koha and test it in the coming
months. Meanwhile Christophe Augias, head of the second library,
couldn't wait and got involved in the french translation team...
Documentation:
I need technical proofing volunteers (particularly people who have
just done installs) for comment on the next version of the manual.
Another attempt to make sure I've got every contributor in the
CREDITS will occur after the tech proofread.
The next edition of the manual is going to try to sit a little on
the fence so as to cover the versions out there (the 1.3/devel-test
and 1.2/stable).
thanks to everyone involved in the project,
-pate
Pat Eyler
Kaitiaki/manager migrant Linux sys admin
the Koha project ruby, shell, and perl geek
http://www.koha.org http://pate.eylerfamily.org
_______________________________________________
Koha mailing list
address@hidden
http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
| [Prev in Thread] |
Current Thread |
[Next in Thread] |