Benjamin, I think this question is a good one for the whole Koha community. Personally, I would love to see an interface between Koha and the Open Archives Initiative Protocol but I've not heard any discussion along those lines thusfar. What do folks think?
Thanks for your message, which my colleague Peter Pissierssens passed to me and which I found very interesting. Sorry to pester you with questions, but I was also wondering if there was any interface between Koha and the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). (and consequently Dublin Core). Several of our colleagues and partner organisations have expressed interest in this initiative as a way of getting the benefits of a distributed database without the communication headaches of a fully distributed search.
I have now subscribed to the mailing lists mentioned, so if you feel that this question would be better answered by the community please feel free to forward it on.
Regards, Benjamin Sims Information Services IOC/UNESCO http://ioc.unesco.org 1 rue Miollis 75732 Paris Cedex 15 FRANCE Tel: [33] (1) 45 68 39 92 Fax: [33] (1) 45 68 58 12
-----Original Message----- From: Joshua Ferraro [mailto:jmf@kados.org] Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 2:31 PM To: Pissierssens, Peter Subject: RE: KOHA
Peter,
Greetings. The Z3950 Server for Koha works fine on a MARC21 system (NPL has been using it for statewide resource sharing for several months now) and can be found either as an add-on to Koha 2.0 (on my website at http://kados.org/LibraryScience/zed-koha-server.pl) or in CVS in the 2.2 tree. In both cases it is necessary to install the SimpleServer Perl module from Indexdata (http://www.indexdata.dk/simpleserver/).
The server can be started by running the zed-koha-server.pl script in a terminal. Eventually it would be nice to build the server into a daemon process but for now it is necessary to leave the terminal open--it also logs all activity to the screen.
There has been some talk about adding UNIMARC support and I would be willing to develop that but would need shell access to a Koha system using a UNIMARC database. If you require customizations for your holdings data that could be arranged as well.
If you want to see a Koha catalog in action you can check out Nelsonville Public Library's at
http://koha.athenscounty.lib.oh.us
If you have any further questions don't hesitate to ask. You may also be interested in checking out the Koha lists. You can subscribe at
Regards,
Joshua Ferraro
Hello MJ,
Thanks for your quick reply. The reason I mailed you is that I am more comfortable writing in English than in French for technical subjects. As Z39/50 compliance is a pre-requisite for our use I will contact Joshua Ferraro to find out how far he has reached with that task.
Thanks!
Peter
-----Original Message----- From: MJ Ray [mailto:mjr@ttllp.co.uk] Sent: Monday, March 01, 2004 6:25 PM To: Pissierssens, Peter Subject: Re: KOHA
Hello Peter,
I'm curious to know why you chose to contact me instead of the French developer? I studied in a university department which is active in oceanography, so I'm quite happy to help you, but I rarely get contacts from France.
On 2004-03-01 13:30:48 +0000 "Pissierssens, Peter" <p.pissierssens@unesco.org> wrote:
I found your name on the KPHA web site. We are looking for an open source library management software application and Koha seems to fit that description. However, one important feature I could not find on the KOHA site is Z3950 compliance. Can a KOHA library database be queried by a z3950 server?
In 2.0, koha can query Z39.50 targets but cannot be queried. Joshua Ferraro, jmf@kados.org, is developing the Z39.50 interface for koha 2.2.
By the way, should UNESCO people say "free software"? We are blessed with the UNESCO free software portal and directory, after all. http://www.unesco.org/webworld/portal_freesoftware/
Also, can you lead me to a few KOHA based online catalogues?
I suggest looking at the "Test Drive" koha servers on the www.koha.org site for now. I can't publish details of many servers. If you are looking for a demonstration of a particular feature, I can try to find someone using it for you.
Thanks in advance for your reply
I hope you find this useful.
-- MJR mjr@ttllp.co.uk www.ttllp.co.uk +44 (0)870 4321 9 10 Creative copyleft computing consultancy, code and articles. Latest news: Working on ISP control panels and koha.org 2.0