[Koha] New to KOHA

[Joshua Ferraro]

Hi Marie,

On Sun, Feb 26, 2006 at 02:01:21PM -0600, Marie Wardall wrote:
> Our school district is building a new K-5 building to open in the 
> fall and we are looking into opening the library using KOHA.  I 
> will be the librarian in the new building and have been looking 
> into and trying things out in the KOHA demo.  Our new school 
> would be the pilot school for KOHA in the district and if things 
> went well then it would be inplemented throughout the district. 
> Currently our district uses Library software from Follett.
>
> The other librarians in the district have a lot of concerns about 
> KOHA and are hesitant on change.  I want to be able to show them 
> that the things they are used to now and some of the improvements 
> they would like to see can be achieved with KOHA.  So here are some 
> things that come to mind after looking at the demo and speaking 
> with my collegues:
Sounds like a sensible concern.

> *Currently, when checking out a student, the picture of the student 
> appears on the screen so that we can verify who the student is.  This 
> is more important at the secondary level, but also relied on in the 
> elementary level when you are getting to know who the child is.  Is 
> this possible in KOHA?
This feature doesn't show up in the demo, but at least one of LibLime's
clients currently uses photos on the screen. It's quite simple to set
up so long as your patron images are saved as the barcode number.

> *WE use a Student Management System called Starbase to dump student 
> records into Follett each Fall.  This is crucial in getting ready for 
> classes each fall because it is a very big time saver.  The little I 
> know about how different systems work I would think that we would be 
> able to do the same with KOHA...am I correct?
Correct, it is quite simple to bulk import borrower records using a
CSV file.

> *Barcodes-Our current barcodes are 5 digits long with a leading T 
> for a material barcode and a leading P for a patron barcode.  Looking 
> at the demo it appeared that the barcodes are 8 digits long.  Can this 
> be changed when going through the setup of the system preferences?  If 
> we would go with KOHA and the rest of the district would get switched over 
> we would need to be able to keep the same barcode numbers on books 
> because re-barcoding the collections would be an enormous job.
Koha will accept any barcodes that you currently use, no matter what the
length. When your data is imported, your existing barcodes will be 
transfered into the system as they are with no change needed. There are
several systems using old Follet barcodes with Koha including the 
Nelsonville Public Library.

> *One last thing for now, as I am sure I will have others as I 
> investigate more and am able to work through the setting up of the 
> system preferences, is that in the Cataloging on the demo there is a 
> Default Marc record framework and a Test Marc record framework I could
> choose from.  I'm thinking I could set up different frameworks here 
> for the different types of materials that I catolog such as book, 
> video, DVD, CD, equipment and an easy MArc for when I don't need or 
> want a complete marc record.  Once I set up those different MArc 
> frameworks when I would catalog I could just choose the framework and 
> put in the information that was needed for that type of material or 
> item...right?
Yep, that's exactly what the frameworks are for.

> Thank-you for any insight or comments you can give regarding these 
> questions/comments.  My questions are lees technical than the others 
> I've seen here, but are important in educating myself and they others 
> in my district about what KOHA can do for us.
Of course, hope this was of some help to you in your decision.

Sincerely,

-- 
Joshua Ferraro               VENDOR SERVICES FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
President, Technology       migration, training, maintenance, support
LibLime                                Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
jmf at liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS