Hi, (I'm going to cross post this to the consortia list too) We have an interest in Koha from many schools libraries in Ireland, but the schools are very badly funded, so we need to come up with a solution that will we relatively inexpensive to implement and support. We favour a hosted system for a number of schools and we need to come up with some additional functionality in Koha to support a schools consortia. We expect to develop these extra features at oslo.ie but would welcome any input, ideas that the community may have. We would also welcome getting together with any potential partners out there who may have a similar requirement for such a consortia. I have included below the 2 options that we have in mind to provide this solution. We favour Option 2, the Filtered solution, since many schools could share the costs of one big hosted system, but are open to suggestions for either solution. Please see below our high level functional spec which lists the features that we believe will be necessary for Koha to operate as a school consortia. Schools Consortia. 1. Many Instances of Koha on one Box Install one instance of MySQL containing one database for each school with a corresponding instance of Koha/Apache per school. There would be a limit to the number of instances that could be installed on a Linux box and any more than 5 would probably get difficult to manage and would use a lot of system resources. 2. One Big Koha System with Filtered Access Modify the Koha application to enable us to install one instance of MySQL, with a single database shared by a number of schools. Install one instance of Koha/Apache with the Koha application modified to filter the data so that each school would only see their own patrons and item records. A system of sharing common bib records would be very useful as the collections across all schools are very similar, especially for electronic resources. The schools generally have between 500 and 1500 students in each school with around 5,000 to 6,000 items in each school, so nothing too huge there. Transaction-wise, you would be talking tens of circulations per library per day, not thousands, so it would be fairly light use. Below are the kinds of things the Filtered system (Option 2) should be able to do: Requirements Bibliographic Database A single bibliographic database onto which libraries can hook their own items. o System administrators / librarians could see every bib, but only their own holdings. o Each library would have control over its own codes – collection, loan categories, borrower categories etc. Perhaps there could be an additional field on the codes records indicating which branch (ie school) “owns” this code. o OPAC users can see only their own school’s local bib/holdings. Requests on own stock only – no inter-lending etc. Book Rental Many schools have a book rental scheme where the school provides all students with their text books for a number of years. Essentially it is a form of circulation where there is a very long loan. There are a few things we could do to enhance it: Koha has a book rental charge on the Item Type – not sure of the full details of how it works. o Have the items in a separate collection / location that is invisible to the OPAC, so that only managers can see the data o Have a switch in the circulation area so that these items are suppressed, unless explicitly included in the display (maybe 3 states: Show all loans, Show no bookrental items, Show bookrental items only) o Have a standard report on the system where the school can print-off a listing of the student’s items and have them in the form of a contract setting out the terms and conditions of the scheme. OPAC We’d need to be able to brand each school with its own look and feel to some extent. Cover images, links to reviews, biographies etc etc would also be required. There are a lot of nice things we could do with the OPAC – I am thinking of an itunes-like coverflow presentation – but that would be a separate topic once the basic technology is in place. Any feedback is welcome thanks, Mike