Hello
We are a small group of volunteers (one of whom is a retired school librarian) who run our synagogue's library in the UK. We would like to produce an online catalogue and are interesting in using Koha for this purpose as we haven't much money. Not having much money is not a good reason to choose Koha. Wanting great software that meets your needs and is easy to use is a much better reason. The library has about 4000 books covering a variety of classifications (fiction, history etc) all related to Judaism. Koha is suitable for libraries of this size. The original accessions book was lost when the library had to be moved a year ago and we have a notebook with handwritten entries for the accessions we have received since the library moved to its new home. Looking at the information to do with koha it appears very technical and we are wondering if we will be able to use it for our catalogue. We would literally be taking books off the shelves to input their information, Koha has the ability to import catalogue records from other libraries. I would be surprised if you cannot find existing records for the majority of items in your collection. Google 'copy cataloguing' and 'z39.50' to learn more about this. not importing the data from elsewhere and none of us has anything more than basic computing knowledge. This is the key. In light of that, you should only use Koha if you can arrange to have it externally hosted by an experienced Koha support
On 08/03/17 01:29, Rebecca Shtasel wrote: provider. Find providers here: https://koha-community.org/support/paid-support/ You may need to do some fundraising or apply for a grant. But unfortunately, running Koha in-house will be very challenging for you from a computing perspective. Once you have a hosted instance of Koha available, your retired school librarian will have sufficient knowledge to lead you forward. She/he can get more support on this list.
Given this, do you think koha is too complicated for us to use or amongst all the information related to using koha is there a very basic guide that would suit beginners like us? If you think we would struggle using koha, could you advise us on software that you think would be more user-friendly and is not too expensive?
Thanking you all very much in advance for any advice you can give.
Rebecca (on behalf of the group)
Best wishes, Bob Birchall Calyx
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