Salvete!

I love Koha so far. I am really grateful to the developers for this gift. It's really making a difference for the library. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy, quickly and smoothly the upgrade from 2.0rc3 to 2.0 went. I can't yet commit financial resources to the project, so I well understand that there are more important things for every one out in developer land to do. I also am not sure whether I'm noticing bugs, or asking for large or small features, so I'll put my requests here. I want to make it plain that my attitude here is very similar to the attitude I take towards Inter Library Loan. I will put my request out there in a bottle, and if someone picks it up and responds, stellar! I'm also aware that a lot of this is probably me setting stuff up wrong. If the fix can be posted, then great. I just need to be able to tell my tech guy (my fiance) what he needs to fix when he feels like it.


On items with multiple 856u fields, the URLs are running into each other and making a mockery of your lovely database. There is clearly a pipe in the display, so I'm not sure why this is happening. I can cut and paste the url into the address box at the top one at a time, but it's so sweet to be able to have patrons click on the url attached to the record and have it go straight to the address. What am I doing wrong? Here's an example

http://65.110.139.7/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=2174

On items with fictitious character subjects for characters with a first and last name, the comma that separates their name seems to be wreaking havoc with the subject headings. I could have sworn that this wasn't happening initially. This is important to me because it turns

Baggins, Frodo

into

Baggins
Frodo

If I type Baggins, Frodo in the search box on the first page of the OPAC, it will find the right records. However, if I click on the subject link from the record itself, it seems to be searching for just Baggins or Frodo not Baggins, Frodo. So it doesn't link to anything. What am I doing wrong? You can see it at the same example:

http://65.110.139.7/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=2174

I am having issues with the subtitle field. I've noticed that in other Koha catalogues it will not display until you hit the records page, but I can't even manage to get it to do that. Under my Marc Links page, I have it linked to the 245b remainder of title field. For now, I am being naughty, and squishing the subtitle into the 245a title field for important subtitles. How do I get the subtitle to show with my record screen? I.E. this screen

http://65.110.139.7/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=4

I am having issues with the additional author field. Left Behind is co written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, for example. Theoretically, I ought to come up with every book they've written together even if I type Jenkins, Jerry in instead of LaHaye, Tim. Koha doesn't appear to search this field properly from a basic keyword search. However, clever programmers you are, if I enter Jenkins into the author field of an advanced search, it will in fact bring up the full list. I have the additional author field linked in Koha, so it does indeed appear on my records screen. I wish this was linked like the author field is, and would be searchable under a basic search. What am I doing wrong? Again the record is:

http://65.110.139.7/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=4

I know I am asking for blood on this one. But it would be fantastic if we could please have an author search from the MARC biblio management screen

http://65.110.139.7:8080/cgi-bin/koha/acqui.simple/addbooks.pl

This is useful for me because on older books where there is no ISBN and the title is strange, sometimes it takes me a while to find the record. I know that I have to type a "The" if the title starts with "The" on this screen, but every now and then, I forget the title proper and have to turn the breeding farm on its ear to find my record.

This is something I haven't even tried yet and have no clue where to start on. In Massachusetts, we fill out a form every year that's basically an inventory of our collections. I know that there's a shelf list function, and I see the stuff for inventory taking. I don't know how to use either. What I want to be able to generate is a raw number of records for a certain type of material. For instance, one of my item types is Adult Fiction. I now have all of my Adult Fiction in Koha. Rather than count each book by hand, I would like Koha to tell me how many Adult Fiction items are in the database. When I'm fully automated with Koha, I would like to be able to know how many of all of the item types I have in my library. In my dreams, I would love for Koha to be able to generate a report that tells me how much each item type circulates. (IE my fiction collection as a whole has circulated 13,000 times last year 4,800 of which were renewals.) In my wildest dreams, Koha would take that data and do nifty pie charts I could present to other librarians or officials. I definitely get the impression that I can at least get raw numbers. But how?

Thanks so much,
Brooke @ Hinsdale MA