Thanks to all who have responded to my earlier question as we consider the feasibility of using Koha in our very small libraries.

1) Has anyone experienced insurmountable learning-curve difficulties in terms of librarian use and administration?  One of our libraries is staffed by someone with minimal computer skills.  Another is self-serve (user self-checkout), with books catalogued by our tertiary work-study students and very little oversight.  I’m wondering to what extent support for these folks could be handled remotely.  ie Will Koha fly if no one is physically present to mind the shop, from the technical side, once it’s set up and the software works smoothly.

2) MARC – English language books not published in the U.S. – I’ve run a few ISBN numbers thru the z39.50 Search and come up empty-handed against the Library of Congress.  Often, our books were published in the UK.  Does the UK have a preferred “Search target”?

3) Running Koha on a shared box versus dedicated.  What about running a Content Management System (CMS), wiki, or some other program simultaneously.  With fewer than 50 transactions per day we might be paying too much for a hosted service.

4) Special Search features.  We have a special cataloguing number for some of our books, is it possible to display this number on the results, after a person does a search?  Would I enter this number during the MARC cataloguing?   Where? – there’s so many fields!  What about cataloguing chapter summaries for a book?  Where might one enter this info?

Thanks for any responses,

Nelson

Centre for Creative Education

Cape Town, South Africa

www.cfce.org.za