LINKcat News

Here's What People are Saying About Koha--Migration Report: Week 3 (May 11-15)

Last week the LINK Implementation committees received basic training on Koha.  Here is what committee members have been saying about Koha.

"I really liked being able to have two tabs open at once so that you could be working on something and then flip over to check out without having to finish the other thing (like updating a patron record) first."  (Brinnan Shaffer/SCLS Delivery).

"The sharing of saved reports will be helpful.  I also like the ability to create new reports." (Carla Di Iorio/Madison)

"I like the ability to create lists in the Catalog, which might finally give us a chance to create a separate list of new materials for the fans of classical music, who currently have to wade through all the other genres to find the five-ten classical titles we add every month." (Dennis Reynolds/Madison)

"I like how we will be able to see a list of the 50 most recently checked out items for a patron. Right now the only way to look at a previous item is if it was overdue or had a problem." (Katie Brenner/Waunakee)

"If you make a juvenile account and the "guarantor" (guardian in Dynix language) has an account you can click on the parent's name from within the child's account to get to the parent's account.  That's handy." (Annie Busta and Jeff Kauffeld / Madison)

"I really liked being able to run my own reports and the saved reports share." (Tracy Herald / Sun Prairie)

"I like the ability to write notes to patrons that they will see when they check their accounts from home." (Emily Harkins / Waunakee)

"I felt like I was shopping the Amazon or Barnes & Noble websites, but I knew I wasn't going to have to get out the credit card.  Our patrons are going to love the new look and the user-friendly feel to the PAC.  Searching felt much easier and more intuitive than what we currently have. We may have to increase our hold shelves to accommodate all of the "new" people placing holds.  I had to leave the training just as they were getting into tagging, but that sure looked like another great feature." (Maureen Palmer / Plain)

"I really liked the way Reports looked. I realize that reports development is not our top priority but I was impressed that it looked pretty flexible." (Susan Lee / Madison)

"As for cataloging:  I liked the fact that it seems like creating templates like our BSE templates is very doable.  I also like the fact that one can un-import bib records if one realizes they made a mistake quickly. And I like the fact that we can have macros in cataloging." (Jan Anderson / Madison)

"I liked that patrons can set up RSS feeds of their searches so they are automatically notified when new items are added that they're interested in.  I see lots of fun possibilities for the public lists that staff can create. "Great Gardening Books at Our Library." "Meadowridge Staff Favorites." "Meadowridge Past Picks of the Week." I will need to restrain myself. FRBRization! It will rock to have all other formats and editions of a work easily accessible through one search." (Kathy Wolkoff / Madison)

KohaCon, Twitter and the meaning of life

[This article was originally posted on the LINK Update blog on April 20, 2009]

Last week Heidi Oliversen and I had the opportunity to go to KohaCon 2009 in Plano, TX which was the second International KohaCon.  The first was held in 2006 in France.  KohaCon is a meeting of Koha users and Koha developers.  Heidi and I learned a lot at this conference that will help us through our Koha implementation and migration.  But more importantly for me, I gained more insight into what it means to be a part of the Koha community.  Being a part of this community means coming together with others who have the same enthusiasm for Koha and who wish to work together to improve Koha.  Yes, we did learn about problems with Koha--but we also learned that there are people who want to fix those problems.

About 3/4 of the way through the conference, someone showed me the Twitter feed for the conference.  People at the conference were posting comments to Twitter (or "tweeting") throughout the conference.  You can literally track the programs by following the feed.  Here is a link to the Kohacon Twitter feed: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=kohacon09.  You don't have to have a Twitter account to read this.

When I returned from the conference, I continued to track the feed.  I did this because the developers were having a post conference "hackfest."  The developer's spent all weekend talking about Koha development and doing bug fixes. While they were doing this, they were posting updates to Twitter.  It was an amazing experience to watch the Twitter feed.  Here was a group of people from around the world--including the creator of Koha as well as people who were brand new to programming on Koha--who spent an entire weekend working on bug fixes.  And they did this just because they like to do it. This is what Open Source is all about folks.  And LINK is fortunate to be a part of it.

OK, so I haven't really discovered the meaning of life.  But I have discovered what it means to be a librarian in a web 2.0 world.  It means that a group of people can sit in a conference room at the Holiday Inn Express in Plano, TX writing bug patches to an ILS and a bunch of other people can see what they are doing by watching a Twitter feed.  Pretty darn awesome if you ask me.

Migration Report: Week 2 (5/4-5/8)

Our module Implementation Committees are all in place.    Next week we will receive basic module training from LibLime's Debra Denault.  We had the first of our "bi-weekly calls" this week.  We discussed the implementation committees and how LibLime will be communicating with them.  They will use Google docs for sharing information.

The first projects that we will be working on are:

• Cataloging: The ability to Cut, Copy and Paste fields and subfields in biblios.
• Cataloging: Moving an item from one bib to another along with all affiliated transactions. 
• Circulation: Add a free-text information note in the patron record that does not display in checkout or on the patron's record in the PAC. (This is similar to current Field 24 on the Dynix patron record.)
• Circulation: The ability to add up to 4000 characters worth of additional information in a block or note on the patron record. (Similar to "Add message" in PURF on the Dynix patron record but much more room to add information.)
• PAC: Display the status of holds in the PAC.
• PAC: Showing patrons their hold priority in the PAC (i.e. their place in the hold queue).
• PAC: Display the number of holds per bib in the PAC. 
• Serials: Store default item codes in Subscription Records which will be applied to item record as the issue is checked in.
• System Administration: The ability to key in a barcode using only significant digits (without the prefix).

These projects were picked because they are relatively straight-forward and will allow us to get our feet wet with the development process.

Migration Report: Week 1

The week started for the LINK Automation staff with two migration "kickoff" calls with LibLime. We were introduced to our LibLime migration team and learned that we will be using Google docs to share information.  Debra Denault, Beverly Church and Mary Moules will be leading us through the migration. We will be holding bi-weekly progress calls with them.

Our migration will have two main phases. The first will be the software development phase. We will be working with Daniel Sweeney who will be writing the specifications for our development projects. Galen Charlton is in charge of the team who will be doing the software development. We will be working on 6 to 10 development projects at a time. The LINK Implementation Committees will be closely involved in the development process.  We have identified our first development projects and hope to get started on them soon.

The second phase will be the data migration. This will overlap somewhat with the development phase.

We have our first on-site training days scheduled. The purpose of these training days is to orient the Automation staff and Implementation Committee members to the Koha software. Knowing how the software works will help us as we develop specifications for our software development projects.

April 30 was the last day for LINK libraries to submit staff to work on the module Implementation Committees. We are finalizing the placement of staff on each of the committees. We hope to send out an an announcement on Monday about the committees.

And finally this week we launched the link2koha blog.  But if you are reading this, you know that already!