Good Morning All We are looking for another option for our school districts library software instead of buying a $40k upgrade (software and hardware). It seems Koha is a option that a lot public and private libraries are using these days. Our head librarian at our district had some questions about the product and I was wondering if someone would be able to answer them? I found what I thought were the answers on the web site but I wanted to get the answers from a live person who is running the software and may have migrated from another application to Koha. Below are the questions. Are records in standard MARC format? How will the schools be organized, separately or together? We need to have them separate. What are the reporting options? If there is a user friendly query module that allows us to pull wnatever report we need that would be ideal. Can we import records from other sources? Will we need to rebarcode all seven collections? No way we have the resources to rebarcode 100,000+ items. Does the system support AR information? How? Thanks for your help! Ed Edward Roche Technology Support/Network Admin Solanco School District edward_roche@solanco.k12.pa.us The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one. Elbert Hubbard
Are records in standard MARC format?
Yes.
How will the schools be organized, separately or together? We need to have them separate.
If you're running one instance of Koha, your schools will be sharing a database. But Koha has options for separating the operation of "independent branches," allowing, for instance, librarians from one of your schools to circulate their own patrons and materials but not another schools'.
What are the reporting options? If there is a user friendly query module that allows us to pull whatever report we need that would be ideal.
There are some reports available, some of which can be customized. There is rudimentary tool for building custom reports, but it's still in the early stages of development. The tool does give you the option of inputting custom SQL to query the database directly.
Can we import records from other sources?
Yes. You can import MARC files in batches and you can use z39.50 to import individual records from public sources like the Library of Congress.
Will we need to rebarcode all seven collections? No way we have the resources to rebarcode 100,000+ items.
You would only need to rebarcode if you had items which have duplicate barcodes (my library went through that when we first brought all our branches together into one system). Other than that Koha doesn't care what kind of barcode format you use.
Does the system support AR information? How?
Perhaps someone can answer that who knows what AR information is? :) -- Owen -- Web Developer Athens County Public Libraries http://www.myacpl.org
Accounts Receivables - Yes - it does have the capability for fines. Also can manage budget and allocations for books On Sat, 2008-12-06 at 10:08 -0500, Owen Leonard wrote:
Are records in standard MARC format?
Yes.
How will the schools be organized, separately or together? We need to have them separate.
If you're running one instance of Koha, your schools will be sharing a database. But Koha has options for separating the operation of "independent branches," allowing, for instance, librarians from one of your schools to circulate their own patrons and materials but not another schools'.
What are the reporting options? If there is a user friendly query module that allows us to pull whatever report we need that would be ideal.
There are some reports available, some of which can be customized. There is rudimentary tool for building custom reports, but it's still in the early stages of development. The tool does give you the option of inputting custom SQL to query the database directly.
Can we import records from other sources?
Yes. You can import MARC files in batches and you can use z39.50 to import individual records from public sources like the Library of Congress.
Will we need to rebarcode all seven collections? No way we have the resources to rebarcode 100,000+ items.
You would only need to rebarcode if you had items which have duplicate barcodes (my library went through that when we first brought all our branches together into one system). Other than that Koha doesn't care what kind of barcode format you use.
Does the system support AR information? How?
Perhaps someone can answer that who knows what AR information is? :)
-- Owen
Matt Burkhardt, MSTM President Impari Systems, Inc. 502 Fairview Avenue Frederick, MD 21701 mlb@imparisystems.com www.imparisystems.com (301) 682-7901
AR probably refers to Accelerated Reader levels (similar to Lexiles). See http://renlearn.com/. The MARC format can accommodate AR levels, etc., but I believe custom work would be required to get Koha to do numeric range searches. This is something that would be extremely useful to many, many libraries, so I would urge the developers to add this feature. Cab Vinton, Director Sanbornton Public Library Sanbornton, NH On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 10:29 AM, Matt Burkhardt <mlb@imparisystems.com> wrote:
Accounts Receivables - Yes - it does have the capability for fines. Also can manage budget and allocations for books
On Sat, 2008-12-06 at 10:08 -0500, Owen Leonard wrote:
Are records in standard MARC format?
Yes.
How will the schools be organized, separately or together? We need to have them separate.
If you're running one instance of Koha, your schools will be sharing a database. But Koha has options for separating the operation of "independent branches," allowing, for instance, librarians from one of your schools to circulate their own patrons and materials but not another schools'.
What are the reporting options? If there is a user friendly query module that allows us to pull whatever report we need that would be ideal.
There are some reports available, some of which can be customized. There is rudimentary tool for building custom reports, but it's still in the early stages of development. The tool does give you the option of inputting custom SQL to query the database directly.
Can we import records from other sources?
Yes. You can import MARC files in batches and you can use z39.50 to import individual records from public sources like the Library of Congress.
Will we need to rebarcode all seven collections? No way we have the resources to rebarcode 100,000+ items.
You would only need to rebarcode if you had items which have duplicate barcodes (my library went through that when we first brought all our branches together into one system). Other than that Koha doesn't care what kind of barcode format you use.
Does the system support AR information? How?
Perhaps someone can answer that who knows what AR information is? :)
-- Owen
Matt Burkhardt, MSTM President Impari Systems, Inc. 502 Fairview Avenue Frederick, MD 21701 mlb@imparisystems.com www.imparisystems.com (301) 682-7901
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participants (4)
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Cab Vinton -
Matt Burkhardt -
Owen Leonard -
Roche III, Edward