Sep 13, 2002 To the Koha community Welcome, Koha seems to be showing up in a lot more places these days. I've heard from people in the US, Ireland, Germany, India, and Panama about their desire to start using it. We've recently shown up on the South African Government's Open Source Software website. I've even seen a Koha installation in Japan. This is really cool! What's even better is that we're poised to do even more. If you've got a question, comment, or a success story, please feel free to drop me a line. 1.2 More work has gone into 1.2.3, and RC13 has just been released. We're seeing a lot of testing help from the community, and this will be key to making 1.2.3 work extremely well for everybody. 1.4 We're getting closer to a 1.3.0 release. Paul Poulain, the 1.4 release manager expects it in the next 2 weeks. What makes this 1.3/1.4 release so special? Well, on the surface, nothing seems to change... Koha should work exactly as in the 1.2 versions, but the underlying database API has been completely rewritten. Data is stored in the old, custom format and in MARC format too (MARC21 English by default, but other flavours of MARC will be supported as well. The 1.3.0 release has to be heavily tested to ensure that everything works as it did under 1.2.X. The next steps in the 1.3 series include MARC tools for librarians, MARC export and import, and many other nice features. REMEMBER : the 1.3.0 IS alpha-software Use it only for TESTING PURPOSES. You've been warned ! Documentation If you've converted from a proprietary ILS to Koha, please contact <nsr_koha@hotmail.com>. He's working on a migration guide to add to our existing manual. Translations Work is currently being done on some of our documentation translation tools. We're hoping to have tools and documentation ready for translators soon. Community Philanthropy Australia is this weeks news maker, see <http://www.linuxpr.com/releases/5107.html >. We've also made it onto a few more radar screens, systems from Follet.com and Epixtech.com have both been spotted checking out Koha. In breaking news, Steve Tonnesen has worked a bit more Koha magic. This week he's released a demo CD for Koha. This CD will allow a user to run a sample Koha installation on any Win32 systems that will boot from a CD. What a great way to spread the word. An ISO image (suitable for burning CDs) is available at: <http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=16466>. Koha has been invited to participate in the Think-Linux show in Columbus, Ohio (in the US). We're not sure yet whether this is logisticly possible for us. If you're interested in making our appearance at this show a reality, or in seeing Koha at a local conference, User Group meeting, or similar event, please let me know. While the pace of Koha acceptance and development seem to be picking up, we're still a very friendly place for newcomers. If you're new to Koha, please stop by the mailing list and introduce yourself. happy hacking, Pat Eyler Kaitiaki/manager the Koha project