On 23/02/2009, at 8:30 PM, Nelson Fredsell -CCE wrote:
Thanks to all who have responded to my earlier question as we consider the feasibility of using Koha in our very small libraries.
1) Has anyone experienced insurmountable learning-curve difficulties in terms of librarian use and administration? One of our libraries is staffed by someone with minimal computer skills. Another is self-serve (user self-checkout), with books catalogued by our tertiary work-study students and very little oversight. I’m wondering to what extent support for these folks could be handled remotely. ie Will Koha fly if no one is physically present to mind the shop, from the technical side, once it’s set up and the software works smoothly.
I can't say much about this, except that I'm on the learning curve (when I've got time and it's not that bad.) Probably be even shallower if I didn't need to work out how to set it up too.
2) MARC – English language books not published in the U.S. – I’ve run a few ISBN numbers thru the z39.50 Search and come up empty- handed against the Library of Congress. Often, our books were published in the UK. Does the UK have a preferred “Search target”?
This web page : http://targettest.indexdata.com/ has a bundle of different options, some free some note, e.g. the british library : ( I understand that there are a number of people on the list having good success with the Scottish Library.
3) Running Koha on a shared box versus dedicated. What about running a Content Management System (CMS), wiki, or some other program simultaneously. With fewer than 50 transactions per day we might be paying too much for a hosted service.
Opinions vary on this one.
4) Special Search features. We have a special cataloguing number for some of our books, is it possible to display this number on the results, after a person does a search? Would I enter this number during the MARC cataloguing? Where? – there’s so many fields! What about cataloguing chapter summaries for a book? Where might one enter this info?
I don't have my Koha on at the momment (so I'll have to check when it's up next, because I'm new at this and my memory is full of rocks and not books at the momment) but I'm fairly sure that there's space in the 600's somewhere for summaries. Hope some of this is a help, -ramon. -