[Koha] Official Koha Newsletter: Volume 1, Issue 4: April 2010

[Nicole Engard]

Official Koha Newsletter (ISSN 2153-8328)
Volume 1, Issue 4: April 2010

Read online: http://koha-community.org/koha-newsletter-volume-1issue-4-april-2010/
Subscribe online: http://feeds.feedburner.com/KohaNewsletter

Table of Contents

    * Koha Development
          o New Features Coming to Koha
          o Self-Checkout Improvement
          o Did You Mean?
    * Koha Libraries
          o Penn Manor School District Migrating to Koha
          o Enhanced Koha Search Widget
    * Koha Tips & Tricks
          o Rebuild Zebra Tip
          o Patron Purchase Suggestions


Development


New Features Coming to Koha
by Paul Poulain

BibLibre has won a contract with a large french public library (Nimes,
about the 20th public french library). The contract contains some new
features that should be very interesting for a lot of koha users. The
two major ones are : – catalogue automatic update : this tool will be
able to update automatically your catalogue with a z3950 server. Every
biblio in your catalogue will be checked on the z3950 external server,
and will be replaced by it if one is found. The rules followed to find
the biblio will be defined in a parameter files (001 entry, (if not
found) then isbn, then issn, then title+author, then …) You’ll be also
able to define some fields you want to keep the local version, some
you never want to retrieve from the z3950,… The script will also try
to retrieve authorities if you have a z3950 server for authorities (at
least for UNIMARC, but we try to write it as modular as possible to
have someone do it for MARC21 as well) – bulk updates on biblios

All of them will be, as usual, available on http://git.biblibre.com,
and included in the next official release (koha 3.4).


Self-Checkout Improvement
by Ian Walls

Marlboro College is sponsoring an enhancement to Koha which will allow
users to login to the self-checkout system with their userid and
password rather than barcode. This option aims to increase patron
security and privacy in environments where their barcodes are easily
determined. The enhancement is nearly complete, and will be submitted
by ByWater Solutions to the community within the next few weeks.


Did You Mean?
by Susan O’Neal

The Middletown Township Public Library [NJ] has sponsored the
development of a “did you mean?’ feature for Koha’s OPAC. It’s pretty
decent and since nobody can or does spell anymore, we think it’s a
needed feature. You can check it out on our OPAC available from the
library’s web page: http://mtpl.org.

PTFS was the developer and they are submitting it to the community on
our behalf through the appropriate channels.

We would appreciate feedback as to how it can be improved!


Koha Libraries


Penn Manor School District Migrating to Koha
by Charlie Reisinger

Penn Manor School District, a public school district in Lancaster
Pennsylvania has successfully migrated the first of its 10 school
buildings from Follett’s CircPlus system to Koha 3.0.5. Since April
1st, Central Manor Elementary school has acted as the district’s pilot
building ahead of the June 2010 district-wide transition. Please feel
free to visit our district’s library site at
http://library.pennmanor.net. Penn Manor would like to thank the Koha
Community for crafting such an incredible system and would also like
to thank Savitra Sirohi and the team at OSSLabs for their help in our
data and record conversion.


Enhanced Koha Search Widget
by Lenora Oftedahl

The StreamNet Library at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish
Commission is currently working on revamping their website. As part of
the re-style, the library included a search widget on the front page.
Not really something so new except we built the functionality using
tools from Firefox to borrow elements from other Koha Community
Members (Butte Silver Bow Public Library). We need to work on the look
at feel of the search box & button, but for now the widget works.


Koha Tips & Tricks


Rebuild Zebra Tip
by Chris Nighswonger

Question:
I have added rebuild_zebra.pl -b -a -z in crontab, however, new
entries are not indexed and cannot be found. I have to reindex
everything each time with rebuild_zebra.pl -b -a -r. What’s wrong?

Answer:
The problem could be one or more of several issues (given in order
from most likely to least likely):

   1. Check that you are exporting the two environmental variables
necessary to run Koha scripts from the command line. These are (modify
to fit paths on your system):

      PERL5LIB=/path/to/koha
      KOHA_CONF=/path/to/koha-conf.xml

      Note: You must also include these at head of the crontab file
which invokes any Koha scripts.
   2. Be sure that you are running rebuild_zebra.pl as your kohauser.
This would include setting up the cron job under your kohauser.
   3. Check directory permissions. Everything Zebra must be owned by
your kohauser.
   4. Be sure you are *not* running the zebraqueue daemon. Currently
this daemon has major problems and the recommended method of indexing
is to run rebuild_zebra.pl as a cron job. Running both causes more
problems.


Patron Purchase Suggestions
by NEKLS

One of the Great Features of the Koha catalog is Purchase Suggestions.

When a patron is logged into their account in the Online Public Access
Catalog, they can place a Purchase Suggestions from the “My purchase
suggestions” tab or if they cannot find what they are looking for in a
search, they are prompted to make a Purchase Suggestion. >> Read More



Newsletter edited by Nicole C. Engard, Koha Documentation Manager.
Please send future story ideas to me.