hi Randy
Perusing the web site I find myself full of questions as to the exact capabilities and features of KOHA. For example, does it handle distribution; bar coding, scanning and things like that? What are its exact functions and capabilities?
What's distribution? Is that circulation - issues and returns - if so yes, this runs a medium sized public library right now - so issues and returns, various branches etc. Yes does barcode scanning - am surprised by how often this comes up - we couldn't imagine that a system wouldn't do it - so don't think to make a big deal of it - is like "does it take a keyboard" :-) we are working to revise the original RFP/spec documents and database structure diagrams - as what we planned and what turned out are somewhat different. However it has what we consider to be the "normal" functionality of a public library system - ie a system to run a public library :-) Specifically: catalogue, members (patrons to the USA peoples), circulation, acquisitions, opac - is light in the areas of built in reports - we've been using a 3rd party report writer which is clunky - although fine if you know how to write SQL queries. More specifically than that - it doesn't curently import MARC records as such - primarily we haven't needed too, but there is a project to do that underway that we're hoping to tap into. It doesn't currently do Z3950 - again not something the people who commissioned the system needed right now - so hasn't been written. It DOES do reserves, fines, overdues, and knows about branches, and definitly if you had 2 schools running it you could merge the catalogues. AS it is now they could be two branches of one library - but we also want to be able to have a sort of meta library layer that lets them be 2 seperate libraries, but have joint catalogue.
Any whacks with a clue-bat, pointers, descriptions of capabilities, and other info for a KOHA newbie would be greatly appreciated
We went public with it about 6 weeks ago and have been blown away by the response - so are madly trying to get the documentation etc more accurate so we can make it available cheers Rachel _____________________________________________________________ Rachel Hamilton-Williams Katipo Communications WEBMISTRESS ph 025 300 825 or +64 04 389 1285 mailto:rachel@katipo.co.nz PO Box 7039, Wellington http://www.katipo.co.nz New Zealand