[Koha] From the Kaitiaki

[Pat Eyler]

                                                       Aug 30, 2002

To the Koha community

Welcome.

This has been a busy two weeks, both personally and for the Koha project.
I hope that I can do justice to the different things that have happened.
If I've missed something, I apologize, please feel free to email me
(kaitiaki at koha.org) a reminder.

The best news over the last two weeks is that more and more libraries are
choosing Koha (see the announcements below). If you've recently made the
decision to move to Koha, or are currently finishing a migration, please
let me know. We have a couple of projects in the works which we could use
your help with.

1.2
 1.2.3 should be out in September.  It will include templating
 throughout the OPAC, maybe online help, and some installation
 improvements.  It is currently in testing, and we would welcome
 feedback from current Koha users.  If you need help setting up a
 testing environment, please contact the developers mailing list,
 there are several people who would be glad to help.

 1.2.4 should be out by the end of 2002.  It will be the last 'new
 feature' release in the 1.2 cycle.  (We may make more 1.2 releases,
 but they will contain nothing but bug fixes.)

1.4
 We're on the verge of releasing 1.3.0 ... this will be the first
 alpha release of the 1.4 series.  We'll continue making 1.3 series
 releases until we hit a level of completeness and stability that
 warrants making 1.4.0, hopefully late in 2002 or early in 2003.  If
 you're interested in the future of Koha, this is where to look.

 1.4 development will get a boost with a financial contribution
 from Nelsonville Public Library.  They have chosen to migrate their
 ILS to Koha, and are going to be paying for some of the MARC Support
 development work that is central to the 1.4 release.  I'm encouraging
 Koha developers (and other Perl developers) to look at their
 announcement at http://pate.eylerfamily.org/geek/MARCRFP.txt and
 consider making a proposal.

Translations
 The french and german teams are coalescing, and both have email lists
 at this point.  Chris Cormack, of Katipo, will have a demo of the
 templating code being used for translation shortly.  Once that is in
 hand, the translators can go to town!  We've also got some
 translations in for the Bengali and Hindi languages.

Community
 Nelsonville Public Library (7 branches, 36,000 active patrons, and
 over 250,000 items in their collection) has decided to migrate to
 Koha.  A press release has gone out, and additional stories seem to
 be brewing.  With the kind of interest that this has generated, I'd
 like to continue to produce press releases for other libraries moving
 to Koha.  If you've recently decided to make the switch, and wouldn't
 mind a little publicity, please contact me and we'll see what we can
 put together.

I'm really impressed with all of the dedication and effort that have been
made over the last 3 months. I think we're starting to see the fruits of
our labors.

happy hacking,

Pat Eyler
Kaitiaki/manager
the Koha project