[Koha] Koha for my daughter's primary school?

[Chris Cormack]

On Mon, 2002-03-11 at 22:43, Mark Hatherly wrote:
> Hi, I'm new to this list and to Koha. My daughter's primary school
> needs/wants an automated library management system, both hardware and
> software. The school has very little money. I found Koha on Google the other
> night, and it seems right to me. I am going to suggest to the school that I
> set up Koha using a couple of recycled machines running Debian, and
> hopefully get the library automated for (a good deal) less than a grand. I'm
> currently speccing the system, and I have a few questions :). (I have had a
> look around your archives, and the site). Firstly, is there a Debian
> package? 

Yes there is Steve Tonnesen has been working on packaging koha up and he
has a debian package on one of his servers. Ill ask him to pop the
address up.

> Someone was talking about it last year, but I can't see what
> happened next. Secondly, the FAQ says the more RAM the merrier (naturally).
> Would 256 mb be ok on a machine serving one client, with a db of about 3000
> books? My primary motivations are cost-management and user acceptance, so
> reasonably fast performance must be weighed against the cost and
> availability of second-hand machines with more than 256 Ram. 

As paul said 256mb should be plenty. With 3000 books mysql should be
able to keep a lot of the tables in ram (which makes everything faster).

> Thirdly, is
> Koha *easy* for me to install, set up, and administer? I have no idea about
> library management, nor do I know what OPAC stands for, etc. But I do know
> Debian, and databases, and networking...The school has a card-based system,
> and the librarian is a part-timer who is not tech literate at all. So an
> honest assessment of whether Koha is appropriate in this situation would be
> very much appreciated. (I hope the answer is a strong "yes!") May I finish
> by congratulating you on your effort.
> 
For the debian package, if you are familair with debian then it is very
easy. The tarball is a bit harder and in fact id recommend downloading a
nightly cvs tarball
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/koha-cvsroot.tar.gz
Or checking the files out of cvs.
Koha 1.1.1 is quite dated now.

Hope this helps

Chris
-- 
Chris Cormack                                               Programmer
025 500 789                                  Katipo Communications Ltd
chris at katipo.co.nz                                    www.katipo.co.nz