- Koha - lists.katipo.co.nz

Introduction - Sean McIntyre
by Sean T. McIntyre 17 May '10

17 May '10

Hello Koha Community! I wanted to take a few minutes to introduce myself. My name is Sean McIntyre and I was brought on board PTFS, after they acquired LibLime on March 15th, to manage all of the software development work related to their ILS / Koha business. This is an exciting opportunity for me and I wanted to share a bit of my background with all of you, as I expect to be an active participant in this Open Source Community as it moves forward (if you'll have me). My family and I live in Northern Virginia, outside of Washington D.C. and have been here since 1981; which is a very long time for this area of the United States. After graduating high school I went on to earn a B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over the next 20+ years, I held a variety of positions in the D.C. Metropolitan area in government contracting as well as commercial software ventures. My resume includes two start-ups and the last 6 years of my career at AOL; the last 3 of which I ran all the technology on the AOL News site, the 4th largest in the world. My background includes a dozen or more programming languages and consistent use of open source software since the mid-90s. In my role here at LibLime, I am involved in all of our software activities, particularly our large sponsored development projects. It is my intent that my team and I will work effectively with the community, building upon some of the collaboration that pre-dated the acquisition in March. Most of our clients are strong advocates of their sponsored development benefiting the open source community as a whole and we intend to honor our clients desires in this area, even encouraging those who feel less strongly about this. Our client base has grown substantially since the acquisition and we have inherited two very large, demanding software development activities that are on a tight schedule. I mention this, as it has an impact on my resources in the near term. Obviously, we have to place a priority on meeting the needs of our paying clients and their time lines. At no time however would I want that to cast a doubt on our overall goal to work effectively with the community and make contributions. It just may be the case that given our current resourcing and economics that features built for our clients will be available to them first to test and flesh out. This will allow our contributions to be of a higher quality then if we released them immediately and to meet the demanding schedules we have inherited. We are looking at different mechanisms to share with the broad community what we are working on, with the thought of reducing the duplication of effort on significant software enhancements and I'd love to hear your thoughts on how we might do this most effectively. Soon I'll be joining the IRC chat on a regular basis and welcome any and all comments or thoughts. If you perceive my team or I are doing something that is not as beneficial to the community as it could be, please let me know. I'd be happy to talk about it and am optimistic that many of these perceptions are based on mis-understandings that are easily cleared up. Sincerely, Sean McIntyre Engineering Mgr, ILS LibLime, a Division of PTFS

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Koha (was Introduction - Sean McIntyre)
by Christopher Nighswonger 17 May '10

17 May '10

Heya Sean, It's nice to have you on board. We certainly look forward to having you as a regular in the community. As a common point of interest, I moved to the Northern VA area in 1974 and left when I graduated from High School in 1988. I did return to work for VDOT in Fairfax, VA as an HCI for a short stint in 90 and 91. On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 9:30 PM, Sean McIntyre <smcintyre(a)ptfs.com> wrote: <snip> > Your suggestions on language that might have been received better than > what we chose seem quite good to me. It was a bit of a struggle for us > as what we were describing had inherent complexities as noted above. We > felt good about labeling the release 'Harley', as that had no intrinsic > meaning. As you say however, the language we used has caused some > confusion. In fact, our own customers are a bit confused as to which > "flavor" (deliberately trying to use a term that is not overloaded) of > Koha has the most features. For us, there are three choices we can > offer. The community supported 3.2 alpha Koha, 'Harley' or the LibLime > Enterprise Koha; each of which have some unique features that could make > them attractive options. Overtime, we would like these to come together > in some fashion for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which > is to eliminate potential confusion. > > As we go forward, how would you and others like the Koha 3.2 alpha > software referred to? Does the phrase you have used here, "community > supported Koha" work for the majority? How do other vendors deal with > this terminology challenge? Our preference would be to use terms that > everyone is comfortable with across the board, the greater value here is > in the software not the labels affixed to that software. I think one of the fundamental problems with choosing a "name" is that there has been no vendor within the community to release a flavor of Koha separate from that released by the community elected Release Manager. (Someone step in and correct me if I'm wrong.) Up until a year or so ago, the Koha community worked together as a fairly well oiled machine. There was the broad understanding and general consensus that everyone waited on the Release Manager for the next official Koha release. Now I know that there were some "internal" variations of Koha running around, but the code changes represented by them were by and large already submitted to the RM and simply awaiting integration, testing, and release in the official code base. But I digress... Probably the best route to have taken would have been for LL/PTFS to have simply pushed the Harley code base to their public git repo and simply announced via the mailing lists/websites that they were beginning to maintain an open public git repo and outline the features contained in the Harley code base as an offering for inclusion into the official code base. This is how every other vendor has accomplished this same thing in the past. As it is, there is now the confusion which you mention over which "flavor" should be used by the end user. Very frankly: We have never had that problem prior to the introduction by LL of their three flavors about a year ago. (Now, you at least have the consolation of knowing that this most recent move was not really the origin of this confusion.) So the entire concept of having to choose a "name" now for what has always been the only official Koha release revolves around this matter of now having multiple flavors of Koha. I would kindly suggest that the real and final solution to the entire issue is to be found in your last statement of the first quoted paragraph above: > Overtime, we would like these to come together > in some fashion for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which > is to eliminate potential confusion. Getting both the Harley and LLEK code bases merged back into the official Koha code base and returning to a single, official release is the best possible solution to all problems, issues, confusions, or <your_favorite_term_goes_here>, etc. So, to answer your naming question: We should continue to refer to the official code base simply as "Koha" because that is what it is. Vendors should simply make their code base available via public git repos and refer to them as such. (I know... everyone has the "right" to "release" their own "version." But strength is had in unity in this case. Diversity of "released versions" will inevitably drain resources from the official code base and the products will be the poorer for it. One such example is given in the next paragraph.) I would trespass a bit further on your good will and say that the fastest way to get both the Harley and LLEK code bases re-integrated into the official code base is to push them both to public repos and allow the team of developers to begin merging immediately. LL/PTFS has done this with the Harley code base. Kudos!!! This is a *very* positive step. Let's bring this along with the publishing of the LLEK code base as well. (A case in point demonstrating the urgency of this need is the fact that one vendor has already begun work on hourly loans. IIRC LLEK already has this feature. So said vendor is wasting both time and money developing a feature which is already in existence. That time and money could be spent developing another new feature which, in turn, LL/PTFS would benefit from at really no development cost to themselves. This is one of the *many* pluses of the FOSS model; no one entity bears the full cost of R&D.) All of this is kindly meant, and I hope has been well said. Kind Regards, Chris Nighswonger Koha 3.2 Release Maintainer

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Retraction - Koha
by Bob Birchall ＠ Calyx 17 May '10

17 May '10

I want to retract part of my previous post. The words in brackets following 'fork' may not be correct, and in any event do not help to resolve the issues. I apologise for clouding the discussion. My concluding remark may also be unhelpful. I do not seek to question any one's motives, but rather to suggest that some further action is necessary, beyond the (acknowledged) positive steps that have recently been taken. Bob Birchall

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koha-3.02.00-alpha2 - Debian Lenny installation, a few problems/questions
by Ville Huhtala 16 May '10

16 May '10

Hello Let me introduce myself. I'am Ville Huhtala, a librarian and a returning subscriber to Koha mailing list from a few years back. I'm thinking of cataloguing my personal collection so that I don't accidentally repurchase the books or movies I already own! Koha may be a little excessive for my needs, but once I have bibliographic data in marc format it can be reused time and again. Now, about installation. I have used included INSTALL.debian-lenny installation guide. Numbered sections below are from there. 1.6 Install Perl dependencies ----- PDF::API2::Simple installation using CPAN don't work. I got it working using debian package libmodule-install-perl, as discussed here: http://lists.katipo.co.nz/pipermail/koha/2010-March/023253.html 2.2 Create the Koha database ----- mysql> grant all on <kohadatabasename>.* to '<kohadatabaseuser>'@'localhost' identified by '<kohadatabaseuserpassword>'; Shouldn't <kohadatabaseuser> be kohaadmin? Is there a need for an another Koha mysql user? In section 3 (Run the Koha installer) one of questions is 'Please specify the user that owns the database to be used by Koha [kohaadmin]' If <kohadatabaseuser> is not kohaadmin, then section 6 (Run the Web Installer, populate the database, initial configuration of settings) and 5.1.2 (Zebra Indexer) will fail. 3. Run the Koha installer ----- Warnings and one failed test - can they be ignored? $ perl Makefile.PL Warning: prerequisite Authen::CAS::Client 0.05 not found. [Sat May 15 23:32:13 2010] Makefile.PL: Warning: prerequisite DateTime 0.51 not found. We have 0.42. [Sat May 15 23:32:13 2010] Makefile.PL: Warning: prerequisite Graphics::Magick not found. [Sat May 15 23:32:13 2010] Makefile.PL: Warning: prerequisite Lingua::Stem::Snowball 0.952 not found. [Sat May 15 23:32:13 2010] Makefile.PL: Warning: prerequisite Text::CSV::Encoded 0.09 not found. Writing Makefile for koha $ make test ... t/Record.......................NOK 1/1 # Failed test 'use C4::Record;' # at t/Record.t line 12. # Tried to use 'C4::Record'. # Error: Can't locate Text/CSV/Encoded.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /home/ville/koha-3.02.00-alpha2/blib/PERL_MODULE_DIR /home/ville/koha-3.02.00-alpha2/blib/arch /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.0 /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.10 /usr/share/perl/5.10 /usr/local/lib/site_perl . /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.0 /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.10 /usr/share/perl/5.10 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at /home/ville/koha-3.02.00-alpha2/blib/PERL_MODULE_DIR/C4/Record.pm line 37. # BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /home/ville/koha-3.02.00-alpha2/blib/PERL_MODULE_DIR/C4/Record.pm line 37. # Compilation failed in require at (eval 4) line 2. # BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 4) line 2. # Looks like you failed 1 test of 1. t/Record.......................dubious Test returned status 1 (wstat 256, 0x100) DIED. FAILED test 1 Failed 1/1 tests, 0.00% okay t/Review.......................ok t/Scrubber.....................ok 1/10# Note: scrubber test output will have whitespace collapsed for readability # done. t/Scrubber.....................ok t/Serials......................ok t/Stats........................ok Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail List of Failed ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- t/Record.t 1 256 1 1 1 20 subtests skipped. Failed 1/26 test scripts. 1/474 subtests failed. Files=26, Tests=474, 4 wallclock secs ( 3.64 cusr + 0.39 csys = 4.03 CPU) Failed 1/26 test programs. 1/474 subtests failed. make: *** [test_dynamic] Virhe 255 5. Configure and start Zebra ----- ... 1.2 Zebra Indexer $ sudo -u ${KOHA_USER} misc/migration_tools/rebuild_zebra -z -b -a => rebuild_zebra.pl Regards, Ville Huhtala

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Official Koha Newsletter: Volume 1, Issue 5: May 2010
by Nicole Engard 15 May '10

15 May '10

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328) Volume 1, Issue 5: May 2010 Read Online w/ Live Links: http://koha-community.org/koha-newsletter-volume-1issue-5-may-2010/ Subscribe via RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KohaNewsletter Table of Contents * KohaCon 2010 o Call for Presentations o Call for Registrations * News from the Developers o Koha 3.2 Alpha 2 Released o Koha Dependencies in Debian * Koha Libraries o American Numismatic Society Migrated to Koha o Koha Open Day in London a Success * Koha/Open Source Learning o Security Tip: Change the Default Password for the kohaadmin User o Open Source Bibliographies KohaCon 2010 Call for Presentations by Nicole C. Engard KohaCon is only 6 months away and we’re still looking for presentation proposals. The official call for proposals for KohaCon10 has been made. If you’re joining us in NZ in October, please think about sharing your Koha knowledge, tips, and ideas with us! Submit as many proposals (https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGJjUWtHMTE2X0J0Vm5ENXlaSn…) as you want. The deadline for submitting proposals is the 15th of June. Call for Registrations by Nicole C. Engard If you’re planning on joining us in NZ in October make sure you submit your registration (http://www.kohacon10.org.nz/2010/registration/) soon. The conference is only six months away and time flies when you’re having fun preparing Koha 3.2 for its official release. News from the Developers Koha 3.2 Alpha 2 Released by Galen Charlton I am pleased to announce release of the second and final alpha of Koha 3.2.0. The package can be retrieved from http://download.koha.org/koha-3.02.00-alpha2.tar.gz Checksums and signatures are also available: * http://download.koha.org/koha-3.02.00-alpha2.tar.gz.MD5 * http://download.koha.org/koha-3.02.00-alpha2.tar.gz.MD5.asc * http://download.koha.org/koha-3.02.00-alpha2.tar.gz.sig I will be mirroring these on Savannah shortly. The next two milestones for release are beta and general release. At this point, I am declaring a soft string freeze; template changes other than those to fix typos and structural problems will be deferred to 3.4. Read more… (http://koha-community.org/koha-3-2-0-alpha-2-released/) Koha Dependencies in Debian by Lars Wirzenius Debian unstable should now have all Koha dependencies included. All but one of them are in squeeze (the current testing) as well. The one missing from squeeze is libtext-csv-encoded-perl. You can download it manually from a Debian package mirror and install it from the command line. Even that package will hopefully enter squeeze by mid-May. Koha Libraries American Numismatic Society Migrated to Koha by Jared Camins-Esakov The American Numismatic Society, a museum and research institute in New York, is pleased to join the ranks of Koha libraries. The new catalog was officially announced (and named) on Monday, April 19, 2010, following a six month migration process. The library staff continues to tweak the interface, and an intensive quality assurance program is underway to bring the database (containing more than 175k records) in line with modern library standards. Please feel free to take a look at the new catalog, accessible at http://donum.numismatics.org/ or the library’s website, accessible at http://www.numismatics.org/Library/Library. Koha Open Day in London a Success by Andrea Chandler We had a successful open day here in London, UK on 23rd April. Representatives from Camlis and the King’s Fund spoke to a group of 10 librarians who are close to deciding to adopt Koha, or have newly implemented it. We kept it small and without representatives from any support companies so that it would feel informal, and to promote Koha without promoting any particular support option. Those attending got to ask plenty of questions and we also gave some live demonstrations of day-to-day Koha functions. We also showed a sneak preview of a feature-in-progress: to import book orders and marc records direct from our suppliers into the acquisitions module. I think we gave some users more confidence to make the change if they choose to. The open day/morning felt like a good model and a way of introducing potential users to each other, instead of us answering inquiries piecemeal. We hope to repeat the event on a regular basis, so please do register your interest with us if you’d like to attend in the future. Koha/Open Source Learning Security Tip: Change the Default Password for the kohaadmin User by Chris Nighswonger The default password for the kohaadmin user is katikoan. When running Makefile.PL, you will see this prompt: “Please specify the password of the user that owns the database to be used by Koha [katikoan]” Rather than hitting the enter key and moving along, take a moment to change this password to something different and something strong. Remember, every person who has ever installed Koha knows the default username and password. Furthermore, according to one researcher, it takes about 58 hours to crack an 8 alphabetic character lower-case password using software and non-dictionary words. (http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles/safetyinnumbers.htm) If you cannot think of a strong, unique password, you can create a few which no one will guess using this site: https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm. Remember to create your database user with the same username/password combination you selected during the Makefile.PL run. If you need to change the username and/or password at a later time be sure to change it in both koha-conf.xml *and* in the database. For more information on how to change the username/password in MySQL, see any of the INSTALL files that come with the source of Koha. You may also view one here: http://tinyurl.com/INSTALL-debian Good security is always a wise investment, and implementation of this recommendation will cost you only a few minutes. Open Source Bibliographies by Nicole C. Engard The newest version of Zotero has the ability to create and sync with public libraries online. Did you know that there was a Koha group library (http://www.zotero.org/groups/koha/items)? To make it easier to access some of these great resources, I have put the Koha bibliography under documentation on the Koha site. In addition to being a member of the Koha library on Zotero, I keep my own bibliographies (http://www.zotero.org/nengard/items) a few of which are centered around open source software. Here are some of the titles I’ve found recently about Open Source Software. Blankenhorn, Dana. “Open source communities must protect their interests.” Blog. Open Source | ZDNet, April 30, 2010. http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=6381. Gentile, Brian. “The Open Source Renaissance.” opensource.com, March 10, 2010. http://opensource.com/business/10/3/open-source-renaissance. Haigh, Paul. “Moving forward with Open Source, a school leader’s perspective.” Open Source Schools, April 9, 2010. http://opensourceschools.org.uk/moving-forward-open-source-school-leaders-p…. Taylor, Mark. “Moving Forward with Open Source, an industry perspective.” Open Source Schools, April 8, 2010. http://opensourceschools.org.uk/moving-forward-open-source-industry-perspec…. Newsletter edited by Nicole C. Engard, Koha Documentation Manager. Please send future story ideas to me.

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Add MARC and z39.50 Search link
by Vikas Salunkhe 15 May '10

15 May '10

Dear all i just updated koha ver.3.00.02.012 to 3.01.00.061 following problem 1) Add MARC link is not available when i Cataloging > Authorities > New Authority fill data following Error is comming and z39.50 Search is not avalible Koha error The following fatal error has occurred: Can't call method "field" on an undefined value at /home/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/authorities/detail.pl line 332. Apache Server version: Apache/2.2.12 (Ubuntu) Server built: Mar 9 2010 21:20:44 Koha 3.01.00.061 Koha DB 3.0100061 MySQL mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.1.37, for debian-linux-gnu (i486) using EditLine wrapper OS Linux vikas-desktop 2.6.31-21-generic #59-Ubuntu SMP Wed Mar 24 07:28:56 UTC 2010 i686 Perl 5.010000 2) When i search books in Catalog i try to click edit batten this is disable can anyone suggest what the problem might be? Vikas Salunkhe

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June General IRC Meeting
by Chris Nighswonger 14 May '10

14 May '10

Just a heads up that the wiki page has been created for the June General IRC meeting. You can find it here: http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_Meeting,_June_2_2010 Please feel free to add any items to the agenda you would like to have discussed at this meeting. Kind Regards, Chris

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bugs.koha-community.org
by Chris Cormack 14 May '10

14 May '10

Hi All About a week ago, I asked people to start registering at bugs.koha-community.org in preparation for shifting there. I'm pleased to say that a lot of you have. I'd like to make a deadline for the switch now, Friday 21 May, 9am NZST (wolfram alpha is a good tool for converting that to your timezone). That is when I plan to shift all the bugs over, so if any of you aren't registered now, can you please do it before then. And from that time onwards please use bugs.koha-community.org. Before then, feel free to have a play there, get used to some of the new features, but any bugs you make or change there, will be overwritten when I do the import of bugs. Thanks very much Happy Bug Hunting Chris RM 3.4

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RFPs for Development of Open Source Software
by Nora Blake 14 May '10

14 May '10

Greetings, Have any of you ever written an RFP for development of open source software that you would be willing to share with me? Thanks, Nora ________________________ Nora Blake MassCat Manager P.O. Box 241 South Deerfield, MA 01373-0241 Toll Free in MA: 866-MASSCAT (627-7228) Local Phone: 413-665-5511 Email: nblake(a)masscat.org Website: http://www.masscat.org AIM: vegancatwoman Skype: veganlibrarian Skype: nora.blake

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Circ stats & deleting records
by Cab Vinton 14 May '10

14 May '10

If we choose to delete records for items that are lost, withdrawn, etc., are the associated circulation statistics deleted from the database as well? Thanks, Cab Vinton, Director Sanbornton Public Library Sanbornton, NH

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