Salvete!
- a common book database for all branches, WITH proper restrictions (no modifications, circulation etc. of items from other branch); - a common borrower database for all branches, but I need .... - ... ability to assign a borrower to one, two, three or all branches with respectable issue rules... - ... and respectable membership policies, which actually narrows to enrollment period and enrollment fee... - ... with fines / payments COMMON to all branches a borrower belongs to. I mean: acount suspended in one branch - automatically suspended in all and so on.
If someone gets time to add these, great. A lot of these resemble what I would consider to be a consortial package. Please keep in mind that effectively you aren't asking for a normal public library setup at all here, you're asking for a normal setup for _multiple_ public libraries (or multiple libraries of different types). Now, I can only imagine that this is a lot of programming for someone (or more likely, several someones.) In short, you're asking for a lot right now. It goes back to good, fast and cheap. You can have 2. I'm willing to wait, because I'm on the good and cheap plan>:). That being said, I'm starting to hear more rumbles from the library community to the effect of "Gee, we wish that we can use Koha for our consortium" or "Gee, it would be neat if a bunch of libraries could get together and use Koha, but we want to retain our individual policies in regards to borrowers and due dates, et cetera." So, if some very, very, very charitable developer out there happened to eventually put this on the road map (or better if it's there and worded differently or I'm too dumb to have noticed put it on the chopping block) that would be splendid. Also splendid would be to assign these features an amount in US dollars in terms of development costs, just in case someone with a big bag of money happens to wish to make them appear out of thin air for folks that are on the fast and good plan. Cheers, Brooke @ Hinsdale MA