[Below is the text of the newsletter. For active links and a more readable format, please visit http://koha-community.org/koha-newsletter-volume-2issue-8-august-2011] Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328) Volume 2, Issue 8: August 2011 Edited by Daniel Grobani, Koha Community Newsletter Editor. Table of Contents Koha Developments Koha 3.4.4 Available Koha 3.6 Update Koha 3.2 End-of-Life Koha Community New Koha Libraries Community Gossip Past Koha Events New Zealand Koha Users Group Meeting Global Bug Squashing Day #3 August General IRC Meeting Upcoming Koha Events Global Bug Squashing Day #4 September General IRC Meeting KohaCon11 KohaCon12 Koha Developments Koha 3.4.4 Available by Chris Nighswonger It is with pleasure that I announce the release of Koha 3.4.4. The package can be retrieved from: http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.04.tar.gz You can use the following checksum and signature files to verify the download: http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.04.tar.gz.MD5 http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.04.tar.gz.MD5.asc http://download.koha-community.org/koha-3.04.04.tar.gz.sig Release notes for 3.4.4 are below the fold. Come and get it! Continue reading “Koha 3.4.4 Available” Koha 3.6 Update by Chris Cormack We are rapidly closing in on the 3.6.0 release, so I thought it would be good remind everyone of the key dates. Feature freeze – 22 September 23:59 UTC – From this point on, no new features will be considered for inclusion into 3.6.0 String freeze – 8 October 23:59 UTC – no bugs that change templates accepted after this point. This allows the translators to translate without things changing on them Translations finished – 18 October 23:59 UTC – Translations submitted, so that they can be tested before release Release – 22 October Koha 3.2 End-of-Life It was decided at the August general IRC meeting that Koha 3.2 has reached the end of its life. Koha Community New Koha Libraries C.G. Jung Institute of New York (via ByWater Solutions) CAUSE (Comfort for America’s Uniformed Services) (via ByWater Solutions) Centenary College (via ByWater Solutions) Central Kansas Library System (via ByWater Solutions) All schools in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island are now using Koha. Community Gossip Paul Poulain of BibLibre is assisting 3.6 Quality Assurance Manager Ian Walls in reducing the backlog of patches waiting for QA testing. Lori Bowen Ayre is working on a spreadsheet comparing Evergreen & Koha features. Brenda Chawner asked community members several years ago to complete a survey as part of her PhD research on factors affecting satisfaction with the experience of a free/libre open source software project. Brenda recently thanked the community and provided an abstract of her PhD thesis. For more info, see http://markmail.org/message/gdofvpmbgseao2vb. Joy Nelson joined ByWater Solutions as their Migration Support Specialist. Melia Meggs joined ByWater Solutions as their Operations Manager. Hal Bright reports that the Farmington Libraries has integrated its Koha database into a mobile app powered by the Boopsie company in cooperation with its vendor, ByWater Solutions. For more info and a demo, see http://flct.boopsie.com. Equinox Software is looking to hire a Library Data and Support Specialist. ByWater Solutions is looking to hire a Perl developer for their support desk. Past Koha Events New Zealand Koha Users Group Meeting by Chris Cormack Today I had the great fortune of attending the first New Zealand Koha users group meeting, in the birthplace of Koha, Horowhenua. There were 51 attendees and even road closures and snow didn’t stop people attending. There was a really good mix of Library types, I think 18 from Publics, 18 from specials, and the rest schools, corporate and academic. It was run as an unconference so the first task of the day was to decide what would be talked about the rest of the day. The programme that we came up with was: The community – How to get involved and make the most Installation/migration/training and why should we use Koha Features – what’s there, and what would we like added Serials, acquisitions, cataloguing Managing digital resources Consortia And one other I have forgotten The discussions went really well, with lots of participation. It definitely won’t be the last meeting, I think we are leaning towards 2 a year but that’s something that will be decided on the mailing lists. While we were busy plotting plans to take over the world, (or at least New Zealand) Koha 3.4.3 was released. Global Bug Squashing Day #3 by Magnus Enger Global bug squashing days are dedicated to getting bugs and patches moving toward resolution. The third GBSD coincided with holidays and other obligations for some people, but we still managed to move a fair number of bugs along. These numbers below show how many bugs were moved to a new status during the day: Needs Signoff: 13 Signed Off: 12 Passed QA: 6 Pushed: 11 Resolved: 30 For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2011-08-05_Global_bug_squashing_day. August General IRC Meeting The August general IRC meeting was held on 2 August 2011. Highlights from the meeting include: Koha 3.2 has reached its end of life. The bare minimum requirement for a vendor to be listed on the community website is a visible link to the community website on the main Koha page of the vendor’s website. Daniel Grobani is the new newsletter editor. Those interested in a role in 3.8 should express interest to the mailing list by 22 September for an October election. For more info, including links to the minutes, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_2_August_2011. Upcoming Koha Events Global Bug Squashing Day #4 The next GBSD will occur on Friday, 2 September 2011. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/2011-09-02_Global_bug_squashing_day. September General IRC Meeting The next general IRC meeting is 7 September 2011 1800 UTC. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/General_IRC_Meeting,_7_September_2011. KohaCon11 KohaCon11 will be held 31 October 2011 to 6 November 2011 in Thane, India. The organizers have extended the deadline for submitting papers from 15 August to 30 August 2011. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Category:KohaCon11 or http://kohacon11.vpmthane.org/ocs/index.php/k/k11. KohaCon12 Proposals for KohaCon12 are being accepted until 1 September 2011. Voting will take place through 1 October 2011. Proposals have been made by software.coop in the UK and Washoe County Library System in Reno, Nevada, USA. For more info, see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Category:KohaCon12.