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

[paul POULAIN]

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? 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. 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.
>
128 mb is, imho, enough, so 256 is great. 3000 books is a small library?
koha is quite easy to install if you know how to configure apache. If 
you don't, it's a little less easy, but the doc is quite good.
The biggest problem in the actual version of koha, for a librarian, is 
that it's not marc compliant. So, you should ask you daughter if this 
could be a problem for her or her boss. Note the next version will be 
marc compliant.
for the last sentence, yes, you can congratulate us ;-)
--
Paul