- Koha - lists.katipo.co.nz

Tenth anniversary
by Galen Charlton 05 Aug '09

05 Aug '09

Hi, I just realized that I had created a happy coincidence by picking 6 September as the soft feature freeze date for 3.2. From docs/history.txt: September 6 1999 Work starts on Koha By the power invested in me by absolutely nobody, I hereby declare 6 September 2009 (by New Zealand reckoning) to be global Koha Day in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the inception of this project. My thanks to the Horowhenua Library Trust for initiating our common endeavor, and to all users and contributors past, present, and future for making Koha the exemplar of sharing that it is. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton Koha 3.2 Release Manager gmcharlt(a)gmail.com

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Koha Users in the UK
by Olugbenga Adara 05 Aug '09

05 Aug '09

Hello all, I just want to find out if there are any users of Koha around Kent or London. I have about 3 installations of koha running in Nigeria. I'm presently in the UK and would really like to visit a koha installation here, and rub minds together on this great software. Thanks Olugbenga Adara Mobile: 234-803-3220288 UK Mobile 07554561589

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Next IRC meeting: 2 September 2009 19:00 UTC+0
by Galen Charlton 05 Aug '09

05 Aug '09

Hi, The next general meeting of the Koha project will be held on the #koha IRC channel (IRC server irc.katipo.co.nz) on Wednesday, 2 September 2009 at 19:00 UTC+0 [1]. Agenda items for the meeting are currently 1. Update on Roadmap to 3.2 2. Update on Koha 3.0 Roadmap 3. Follow-up on actions from General IRC Meeting 5 August 2009 To add items to the agenda, please edit the page for this meeting on the wiki: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=meetingnotes09sep02 [1] Time converters: http://www.worldtimeserver.com/meeting-planner-times.aspx?&L0=US-FL&L1=UTC&… http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2009-09-02%2019:00%20UTC+0 Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton gmcharlt(a)gmail.com

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Today's IRC meeting
by Galen Charlton 05 Aug '09

05 Aug '09

Hi, Thanks to all who attended today. A summary of the meeting as well as a link to the transcript can be found at http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=meetingnotes09aug05 The direct link to the transcript is http://koha.org/cgi-bin/logs.pl?user=&startdate=2009080503%3A00%3A58&enddat… Some significant items from the meeting: [1] I am calling a soft feature freeze for 3.2 by the end of day on 6 September 2009. [2] I call on everybody to go through the bugs database and (a) close existing bugs that are fixed (b) identify and mark potential blockers for the release of 3.2 [3] BibLibre expects to do a release of 3.0.4 some time before mid-September, including bugfixes and some improvements from HEAD. [4] There was some clarification on policy regarding participation and anti-spam policies on various social software networks used by Koha and Koha project members. [5] There was much discussion about setting up live and archived tutorials for new contributors to Koha. Nicole Engard has set up a page on the wiki to discuss details: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:documentation:tutorials Thanks to MJ Ray for taking notes. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton gmcharlt(a)gmail.com

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Anyone have duplicate 00/02/0 rows in circ history?
by Agnes Rivers-Moore 05 Aug '09

05 Aug '09

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Re: [Koha] Problem adding book with non ascii characters in title
by BWS Johnson 04 Aug '09

04 Aug '09

Salvete! >More specifically, what *encoding* of the characters have you tried? Combining characters or composed? > >Users are typically confused to realize there are multiple encodings for various characters, so it is probably >worth your time to check by hex value or unicode number. In my experience, combining characters are >less reliably interpreted by Koha and Zebra than composed ones. Then trying to use multiple combining >characters *always* failed for me. Is this a problem with a solution? It seems like a problem with a difficult solution and not an unsolvable problem. It seems like a good one to address slowly but surely, cause if we do it well, I can only imagine that a lot of people would be happier for it. Cheers, Brooke

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Evergreen
by Vicki Teal Lovely 04 Aug '09

04 Aug '09

Hi, I want to re-tract the statement that I made at the LibLime users group about the Evergreen code being forked. This was based on a mis-understanding of something someone said. I have since been assured by more than one Equinox employee that there is no intention by King County to fork the Evergreen code. (Whew!) I apologize for making such a statement when I was not fully informed. If you know others outside this mailing list who have received the LibLime users group notes and who may be concerned about this statement--please feel free to share my retraction. Vicki -- Vicki Teal Lovely vtl(a)scls.lib.wi.us Software Applications Supervisor SCLS Automation 201 W. Mifflin St. Madison, WI 53703 (608)261-9109

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REMINDER: next general IRC meeting tomorrow, 5 August 2009
by Galen Charlton 04 Aug '09

04 Aug '09

Hi, The next general IRC meeting of the Koha project will take place on 5 August 2009 at 10:00 UTC+0. The agenda currently includes the following items: 1. Update on Roadmap to 3.2 2. Update on Koha 3.0 Roadmap 3. Follow-up on actions from General IRC Meeting 1 July 2009 4. Management of KohaSocialNetworks 5. Tutorials for new contributors To propose additional agenda items, please go to the wiki page for this meeting located at <http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=meetingnotes09aug05>. As a reminder, the IRC meetings take place on the #koha channel on the IRC server irc.katipo.co.nz. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton gmcharlt(a)gmail.com

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Re: [Koha] Support for Koha
by Weinheimer Jim 04 Aug '09

04 Aug '09

This has been an enlightening thread concerning the nature of open source. Open source is still a relatively new business model that has a few bumps in the road and certain misunderstandings, including some misunderstandings of my own. I found this article in ComputerWorld very useful to get a better grasp of both sides of the issue that I would like to suggest to others: "Does the open-source development model work for business users? By Todd R. Weiss March 5, 2008" http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&tax… First, I am one of those koha users who has used the open source version for several years. I guess I can be called a developer even though I haven't participated in anything because I have concentrated on improving my own koha catalog to make it do what I want. Since I lack a lot of the "higher" computing abilities, I rely on a colleague who is very interested in Linux and Perl. We also run our own "server" (actually, a spare, very small and weak computer that nobody else on campus wanted). For me, the main point of the open source model is that I can make the system work the way I think it should so as to help my patrons in the ways I think are best. It doesn't mean that I am right, but I can try things out. So far, it has worked pretty well for me. Because it's open source, I can provide certain functions available in no other catalogs. This may mean including javascripts or style sheets or whatever, without having to ask the owners of the software for permission, or having to wait for them to get around to it. I can just try something, see if it works or not, correct any problems, and I can always "tweak" things to make them better. This allows for a freedom that libraries who subscribe to proprietary catalogs do not have, since they have to wait for the company to get around to it and then, take whatever they get. So for me, if I or a student or faculty member has an idea, I can try it out immediately, we can see if it works at all, where the problems lie, and fix them. Intellectually, it can be quite exciting! To me, this is the real promise of open source. It isn't so much saving money (although my institution has saved a lot); open source means *developing* tools that people can use. I emphasize "developing" because the tools will never be finished. I think this is a 180 degree change from the normal idea of instituting a library catalog, which is seen as having to learn yet another fixed machine, where you will hear questions such as: "How do I do ...?" "How do you search ...?" With open source, the discussions are (or should be) more like, "I'd like to ..." "How about ...." or "I hate the way this works, let's try ..." Sometimes we have problems that a host company would solve. For example, we have in the past year been deluged by referrer spam from porn sites that blow out the log files (since the server we use is so small), and my IT colleague and I have had to come up with some innovative ideas to solve the issues. But we did, and it was an interesting exercise. I have been one of those bad open source user/developers since I have not contributed my code to the general community. This isn't because I want to keep it to myself--quite the opposite, but I simply run out of time and energy to do so. Still, there have been a couple of libraries where I have shared privately and I like to think I have helped. Now that I have gained some (rather painful!) experience, I am trying to modularize my additions and in this way perhaps I can participate a bit more. I want to give three cheers for LibLime, who has been so important in the development of Koha and to Joshua himself for such untiring commitment to it. Without that commitment, I am sure that Koha would be much poorer today and therefore, much less used and with far less of a future. James (Jim) Weinheimer Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy

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Re: [Koha] Support for Koha
by BWS Johnson 04 Aug '09

04 Aug '09

Salvete! Nau te rourou, naku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi. See, Chris is civilising me slowly but surely. :) It would be nice to have this as a byline on Koha pages or graphics. >No Cheryl, this is not at all the way the Koha Community operates as a >rule. I feel the same, and I would love to have this in a planning document. I think it is crucial to get to voting on some mission and vision statements so that we can point to guidance and that people feel included in the project. We need to know where we're going. >There are plenty of other vendors who are prepared to honour the >licensing conditions designed to keep Koha the open source project it >was released as and should always be. Choose another vendor if you are >uncomfortable about a vendors choice to hold back code or not >contribute to the good of the community; there are plenty of good >alternatives out there. In diversity, both the project and the ecosystem thrive. This is not something to take as an attack, it is a suggestion to take to heart, at least as I read it. Again, thank you HLT for your initial contribution. This would not exist at all without you. Yes Josh, LibLime has contributed. Thank you for it. I don't believe anyone has suggested otherwise. It is very hard for anyone to provide you with any sort of tip or feedback that is different from what you hold in your head without you taking offence. The minutes reached me as well through the pixelly moccasin trail that is the Librarian's realm. I felt that it wouldn't be quite fair to circulate them myself since I wasn't in the room. I also felt that the very act of putting them on list would make you overreact, and I am unhappy to see that a very neutral comment did the same anyhow. I also feel as though I am not the Guardian and that Rachel should be speaking to this more than I should. I don't think anyone on this list or otherwise wants to see LibLime fail. I do think that almost no one wants to go back to the same situation that they had with a proprietary vendor. This indefinite withholding of code is a step backwards. You have control of your company and you could chose to do something different from others. Solitary control just won't happen, and shouldn't. Creation of closed lists and a second tier of membership are not in the spirit of the project or open source. There are a lot of unanswered questions in that conversation, and I still feel as though there are many mutually beneficial unexplored options out there. This seems like the sort of project that needs an incubator to foster start ups neutrally. My one bead, because I am keeping half for now, Brooke

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